Publication & Discovery
For a data space to create value, participants must be able to publish what they offer, and others must be able to discover it easily.
Within the iSHARE context, this already connects to several discovery-related capabilities:
(Data) Services: All participants providing services must provide a /capabilities endpoint, as defined in the developer documentation. This endpoint provides information on the available iSHARE service offerings.
Participants and Data Spaces: Participants or full data spaces can be made discoverable through the /parties endpoint or /dataspaces endpoint of any iSHARE Participation Registry.
Supplementary agreements or specifications: While partly covered by the iSHARE Trust Framework, a data space remains free to define additional agreements or specifications on top of this building block, depending on its governance and use cases.
For a data space to create value, participants must be able to publish what they offer, and others must be able to discover it easily. Publication and Discovery therefore focuses on how offerings are exposed through catalogues, how they are managed throughout their lifecycle, and how potential data users can find them in a secure and interoperable way.
Catalogue interfaces and offering lifecycle
Each participant agent should be able to expose its offerings through a catalogue interface so that they can be discovered by data consumers. Offerings should also be managed throughout their lifecycle: they can be published, updated, removed, and discovered. Depending on the data space design, visibility and access to offerings may be open to all participants or limited to a specific group.
Catalogue Protocol
DSSC 3.0 places the Dataspace Protocol Catalogue Protocol at the centre of this building block. It enables the querying of a Participant Agent’s catalogue and supports the exchange of offering metadata using DCAT-AP-based structures. Access and usage conditions can be expressed through ODRL policies. This allows catalogues to support not only publication, but also interoperable discovery and controlled visibility of offerings across participants and, where relevant, across data spaces.
Catalogue setup options
A data space may choose different architectural approaches for catalogue services. Catalogues can remain decentralised, with each participant agent exposing its own catalogue, or a data space may introduce a centralised discovery or broker component. The choice between these models should be defined in the governance framework, based on visibility needs, interoperability goals, trust relationships, and operational complexity.
In practice
Publication and discovery usually involves four core functions:
publish an offering
update an offering
remove an offering
discover an offering
These functions depend on clear metadata descriptions, authentication and authorisation, and the ability to control who may see or access a given offering.
See the complete DSSC Description here.
Publication and Discovery connects closely with other building blocks:
Data Space Offering: Describes the data and services offered.
Regulatory Compliance: Covers rules for data intermediation services.
Data, Services and Offerings Description: Manages offerings for publication and discovery.
Value Creation Services: Publishes available services via the Publication and Discovery building block
The guiding questions can help in the co-creation process and in defining this building block, so please see the next section.
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