Functional Requirements

This section of the Rulebook describes the mandatory functional requirements as well as optional elements for building trusted data spaces. It highlights the design decisions necessary to build and operate data spaces in centralized, federated or decentralized architectures and deployment patterns to show how various solutions are enabled by the building blocks of data spaces.

Enterprises strive to have control over their data. Control is important when managing data internally, but even more in sharing data with others. The core function of a data space is to broker trust between participants and to negotiate available data contracts. They enable control over data sharing and create value for all involved parties.

A data space is both a multi-organizational agreement and a supporting technical infrastructure for data sharing. Participants can have pre-existing levels of trust: Some may have a prior relationship and trust each other, while others might have no relationship and are untrusted entities. Data spaces even make data sharing between direct competitors possible. Data space connectors facilitate and orchestrate the sharing of data assets, while enforcing requirements set by the data provider. A connector includes policies, configuration and other metadata artifacts that can run on any cloud infrastructure, on premises or on an edge device.

Data sharing in a data space is not limited to sending data from one participant to another but can be more complex. Fundamentally, all sharing of data consists of peer-to-peer interactions. All scenarios of multiple actors are built on peer-to-peer data contracts of two participants. A data space adds value beyond individual data transfers by enabling collective data services and applications. These additional capabilities require certain functional requirements to be included in the design of a data space.

Different business, regulatory, legal, or technical requirements necessitate different architectures and approaches. Some data spaces might require centralized components with centralized control, while others might be designed so their participants have a maximum level of autonomy and maintain agency over how to share their data.

The functional requirements section refers to all involved roles as 'participant' in a data space. This underlines the need for all parties involved in a data space and in the exchange, sharing, and usage of data to adhere to a common set of rules, the policies provided by the data provider, the rights granted by a data rights holder, and given regulations.

An overview on roles in a data space is given in section 2 on guiding principles