CX-0018 Dataspace Connectivity v.4.2

ABSTRACT

This document specifies the communication requirements for data exchange between participants in the Catena-X data ecosystem. The aim is to ensure interoperability and data sovereignty at the same time.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 AUDIENCE & SCOPE

This section is non-normative

AUDIENCE

The role definition is based on the definition of the CX Operating Model.

The standard is relevant for the following roles, as they must be certified against it:

• Enablement Service Provider
• Business Application Provider
• Data Provider/Consumer

Note: The normative section of this standard uses the DSP-definitions of "Consumer" and "Provider". Any of the aforementioned Catena-X-roles can assume either DSP-role.

The standard is relevant for the following role, as they must certify against this standard:

• Conformity Assessment Body

The standard is relevant for the following role, as they carry out their advisory on the basis of this standard.

• Advisory Provider

SCOPE

This document covers the requirements for dataspace connectivity. It describes

• how communication between dataspace participants must take place,
• which transfer type profiles have to be supported by any Provider or Consumer,
• how communication with credential services must take place,
• and which conventions apply to datasets.

1.2 CONTEXT AND ARCHITECTURE FIT

This section is non-normative

The connector is the main technical component that implements dataspace connectivity including data sovereignty and interorganizational interoperability. It is part of the enablement services, which are intended to enable participation in the Catena-X ecosystem.

The following figure shows how the connector fits into the overall framework of Catena-X to exchange data.

Figure 1: Framework of data exchange

1.3 CONFORMANCE AND PROOF OF CONFORMITY

As well as sections marked as non-normative, all authoring guidelines, diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.

The key words MAY, MUST, MUST NOT, OPTIONAL, RECOMMENDED, REQUIRED, SHOULD and SHOULD NOT in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 RFC2119, RFC8174 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

1.4 TERMINOLOGY

Term	Description	Reference
International Data Spaces Association (IDSAIDSA The IDSA is an organization working to create the future of the global digital economy with International Data Spaces (IDS): a secure, sovereign system of data sharing where participants can realize the full value of their data.)	Organisation that provides standards and architecture solutions for secure, sovereign data sharing within so-called dataspaces	https://internationaldataspaces.org
Eclipse Dataspace Working Group (EDWG)	Eclipse Foundation Working Group that develops and maintains specifications for the data exchange within a dataspace	https://dataspace.eclipse.org
Dataspace Protocol (DSP)	Protocol specification, designed to facilitate interoperable data sharing within a dataspace, currently governed by the EDWG	https://github.com/eclipse-dataspace-protocol-base/DataspaceProtocol
Decentralized Claims Protocol (DCP)	Protocol specification for the exchange of verifiable credentials and presentations between a connector and a wallet as well as the issuance of such credentials by an identity provider	https://github.com/eclipse-dataspace-dcp/decentralized-claims-protocol
Connector (or formal Participant Agent)	(Catena-X) Technical component that allows business applications to interact with each other within a dataspace	https://github.com/eclipse-tractusx/tractusx-edc
(Catena-X) Business Applications	(Catena-X) Applications that enable functionality of different use cases, hosted by a data provider or consumer itself or by a business application provider	https://eclipse-tractusx.github.io/developer
Catena-X Marketplace	The Marketplace inside a portal, allowing participants of the Catena-X network to search and select Catena-X Business Applications	https://catena-x.net/en/offers/portal-marketplace
Open Data Rights Language (ODRL)	Policy expression language that provides a flexible and interoperable information model, vocabulary, and encoding mechanisms for representing statements about the usage of content and services	https://www.w3.org/TR/odrl-model, https://www.w3.org/TR/odrl-vocab, https://w3c.github.io/odrl/bp

• The terms Consumer, Provider, Participant Agent are adopted from the DSP.
• The term Credential Service is adopted from the DCP.
• The terms Core Service Provider A/B (CSP A/B), Onboarding Service Provider (OSP), Enablement Service Provider (ESP), Business Application Provider (BAP), Advisory Provider (AP) and Conformity Assessment Body (CAB) are adopted from the CX Operating Model

2 MAIN CONTENT

This section is normative

This section uses terms that are taken from the DSP context specified in "dspace": "https://w3id.org/dspace/2025/1/context.jsonld". Terms that are not defined in this context are provided in an expanded version.

2.1 Communication between Dataspace Participants

Dataspace Participants exchange data via their Participant Agents which are a logical component that communicates via a set of well-defined messages.

Participant Agents MUST facilitate data exchange according to the HTTPSHTTP HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents (such as HTML). It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but can also be used for other purposes. binding defined in the Dataspace Protocol.

Providers and Consumer MUST expose the specified endpoints for the

• Catalog Protocol
• Contract Negotiation Protocol
• Transfer Process Protocol
• Version Metadata

as specified in the HTTPSHTTP HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents (such as HTML). It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but can also be used for other purposes. binding of the Dataspace Protocol.

2.1.1 Usage of DID in the data exchange

A Participant Agent MUST use the DID in all protocol message properties that identify a Participant. This includes properties such as participantId in the Catalog response message.

2.2 Transfer Type Profiles

This section provides regulations for a non-exhaustive selection of Transfer Type Profiles. Further profiles can be defined by extensions to this standard. A Provider MAY offer as many Transfer Type Profiles as necessary to support all intended use cases.

Despite the IRIs of the currently used identifiers for transfer types are not yet included in the DSP-context, they will be used as preliminary identifiers.

Providers SHOULD be able to serve data according to that signal when data transfer is requested by a consumer via a TransferRequestMessage.

2.2.1 HttpData-PULL

A Provider MUST add a "format":"HttpData-PULL" to the Distribution of a Dataset in the Catalog response to indicate support for the HttpData-PULL transfer type.

A Consumer MUST send a TransferRequestMessage with "format":"HttpData-PULL" to start an HttpData-PULL transfer process. The dataAddress property is not required and won't be processed by the Provider.

A Provider MUST send a TransferStartMessage with sufficient information in the dataAddress property so that an HTTPHTTP HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents (such as HTML). It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but can also be used for other purposes. request to the endpoint may succeed. The endpointType property MUST be https://w3id.org/idsa/v4.1/HTTP. The following endpointProperties MUST be added to the object as specified in the table below:

Name		description
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/endpoint	REQUIRED	The endpoint URL of the dataplane to access the data assetAsset On the Data Provider side, an Asset describes the data set which will be shared or can be consumed by a Data Consumer..
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/authorization	REQUIRED	The access token to access data. To be included in the Authorization header of an ensuing HTTPHTTP HTTP is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents (such as HTML). It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers, but can also be used for other purposes. request without any additions/modifications.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/authType	OPTIONAL	Hint for the authorization scheme expected by the endpoint. Clients are not required to process this property.
https://w3id.org/tractusx/auth/refreshEndpoint	OPTIONAL	Endpoint to refresh the access token using the refreshToken. It behaves as defined in RFC6749 section 6 using an STS-token for authentication.
https://w3id.org/tractusx/auth/refreshToken	OPTIONAL	The refresh token to present to the refreshEndpoint in conjunction with the old access token.
https://w3id.org/tractusx/auth/expiresIn	REQUIRED	Time to live for the access token after issuance.

A Provider Participant Agent MUST ensure that the requested backend system has sufficient context from the negotiation to evaluate the legitimacy of the request.

A Consumer may then use the provided data to execute requests against the endpoint.

Despite the token, the endpoint still has the right to refuse serving a request. This may occur for instance when a consumer attempts to access data which is in general available but not covered by the negotiated contract.

2.2.2 AmazonS3-PUSH

A Provider MUST add a "format":"AmazonS3-PUSH" to the Distribution of a Dataset in the Catalog response to indicate support for the AmazonS3-PUSH transfer type.

A Consumer MUST send a TransferRequestMessage with format:AmazonS3-PUSH and a dataAddress property to start an AmazonS3-PUSH transfer process. The dataAddress property MUST contain a endpointType property set to AmazonS3. The endpointType MUST be decorated with relevant endpointProperties as follows:

Name		description
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/type	REQUIRED	Defines the AssetAsset On the Data Provider side, an Asset describes the data set which will be shared or can be consumed by a Data Consumer. type (AmazonS3)
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/bucketName	REQUIRED	Defines the name of the destination S3 bucket.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/region	REQUIRED	Defines the region of the destination bucket (us-east-1, eu-west-1 ...)
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/objectName	OPTIONAL	Defines the desired name of the S3 object in the destination bucket.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/folderName	OPTIONAL	Defines the desired folder name for S3 objects to be grouped (folderName/) in the destination bucket.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/secret	REQUIRED	Defines the Json object as a Json-escaped string holding "edctype": "dataspaceconnector:secrettoken" "accessKeyId":"<ACCESS_KEY_ID>", "secretAccessKey": "<SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>" and optionally for temporary access "sessionToken": "<SESSION_TOKEN>" and "expiration":"time-in-seconds" properties.

A Provider MUST send a TransferStartMessage with an empty dataAddress property. The provider MUST execute a transfer as specified by the received request.

2.2.3 AzureStorage-PUSH

A Provider MUST add a "format":"AzureStorage-PUSH" to the Distribution of a Dataset in the Catalog response to indicate support for the AzureStorage-PUSH transfer type.

A Consumer MUST send a TransferRequestMessage with format:AzureStorage-PUSH and a dataAddress property so that triggering a transfer to the endpoint may succeed. The endpointType property MUST be AzureStorage. The endpointType MUST be decorated with endpointProperties as follows:

Name		description
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/type	REQUIRED	Defines the AssetAsset On the Data Provider side, an Asset describes the data set which will be shared or can be consumed by a Data Consumer. type (AzureStorage)
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/account	REQUIRED	Defines the name of the destination Azure Storage account.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/container	REQUIRED	Defines the name of the destination Azure Storage container.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/blobName	OPTIONAL	Defines the desired name of the blob in the destination storage. The data provider might ignore that, if the data source contains multiple files.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/folderName	OPTIONAL	Defines the desired folder name for blobs to be grouped (folderName/) in the destination storage account.
https://w3id.org/edc/v0.0.1/ns/secret	REQUIRED	Defines the Json object as a Json-escaped string holding "edctype":"dataspaceconnector:azuretoken","sas":"<sas-token>" and "expiration":"time-in-seconds" properties.

A Provider MUST send a TransferStartMessage with an empty dataAddress property. Fthe provider MUST execute a transfer as specified by the received request.

2.3 Communication with a Credential Service

This standard assumes that each Participant has been issued a set of Verifiable Credentials (VCs) according to the CX-0050 standard. These VCs are stored in a Credential Service.

A Consumer MUST be able to retrieve an access token according to the Verifiable Presentation Protocol (VPP) that is part of the Decentralized Claims Protocol (DCP).

The scope of the token for requesting a Catalog MUST include the following credentials as defined in CX-0050:

• Membership Credential
• BPNBPN A BPN is the unique identifier of a partner within Catena-X. Credential
• Framework Agreement Credential

A Provider MUST be able to receive and securely verify an access token and derive information on a Consumer's Credential Service in order to execute the DCP VPP Request 6. This corresponds to the role of Verifier.

A Consumer MUST include an appropriately scoped STS-Token in the Authorization header in all DSP messages sent to the provider (see DSP) and in addition in the refresh message (see HttpData-PULL)

2.4 Policy Value to Verifiable Credential Mapping

The conventions for policy constraints and the relevant constraints for Verifiable Credential checking are defined in the Catena-X standard CX-0152 Policy Constraints for Data Exchange. Based on this, the connector MUST support the verification of Verifiable Credential as described below.

The mapping between a policy constraint referencing a verifiable credential and the credential name depends on the type of credential.

• For credentials requesting the rightOperand as active the leftOperand is the base for the credential name.
• For other policy constraints referencing a verfiable credential, the rightOperand is the base for the credential name

Based on the corresponding base name of the credential, the following steps have to be applied:

• The given base name potentially needs to be separated by the first “:” to separate the version term.

• Thereafter, the term “Credential” needs to be appended to the base name.

• If a version is available, the content has to be stored for credential evaluation purposes. The version is handled as a literal and can only be used for equality comparisons.

Example (rightOperand to Credential):

• DataExchangeGovernance:x.x -> DataExchangeGovernanceCredential with version “x.x”

2.5 Conventions for Datasets

A Provider MUST annotate all instances Dataset in a Catalog with the following properties:

• http://purl.org/dc/terms/type holding an object with at least an @id property pointing to a concept describing what type of APIAPI An API is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. this Dataset represents. Subsequent standards define the exact value this property shall hold, depending on the business scenario. The set of concepts is maintained in the taxonomy https://w3id.org/catenax/taxonomy# and MUST extend the concept https://w3id.org/catenax/taxonomy#Asset.
• https://w3id.org/catenax/ontology/common#version holding a string with SemVer semantics indicating the APIAPI An API is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. version of the APIAPI An API is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. that was typed by the http://purl.org/dc/terms/type property. It is allowed to use version information that is incomplete according to SemVer. Subsequent standards define the exact value this property shall hold, depending on the business scenario.

2.6 Participant Agent Management

A Catalog offered by a Providers Participant Agent MUST provide only Dataset instances that can be negotiated with the same Participant Agent.

A Provider MUST publish all Participant Agents that should be detectable by a Consumer by specifying the participants version endpoint address in the DID document as specified in the CX-0049 DID Document standard as a entry in the service sectoin of type DataService. The endpoint address has the format https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath/.well-known/dspace-version, with subpath being an a arbitrary path below the Providers chosen domain.

The path https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath MUST be the path used for registration of the connector at the Core Service Provider B.

The content of the dspace-version endpoint is defined in section on protocol version handling

The definition of the service reference reflects the section Discovery of Service Endpoints in the DSP spec.

2.7 Protocol Version Handling

A Provider MUST provide the version metadata endpoint at the url https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath/.well-known/dspace-version returning a response object as defined in the section on Exposure of version in the DSP spec. An example for the response object is:

{
  "protocolVersions": [
    {
      "version": "2025-1",
      "path": "/2025-1",
      "binding": "HTTPS"
    },
    {
      "version": "v0.8",
      "path": "",
      "binding": "HTTPS"
    }
  ]
}

The reference point of the given relative path segments is the base path that hosts the version metadata endpoint, i.e., in the described case https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath. For example, from the given information, the path to access the 2025-1 version of the catalog service is https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath/2025-1/catalog and the path for the old protocol version v0.8 is https://subdomain.provider-domain.com/subpath/catalog. For convenience, a participant agent SHOULD accept for the old protocol a version string 0.8 as well.

A Consumer SHOULD evaluate the protocol versions supported by the targeted Provider and SHOULD limit the use of protocol versions to the latest offered by the Provider.

A Providers Participant Agent MUST be capable to identify by the called DSP apiAPI An API is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other., which version the Consumer is using for the communication and MUST answer with the right response formats according to that version.

The definition of the version management reflects the section Exposure of versions in the DSP spec.

3 BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY

Backward compatibility is handled by the Dataspace Protocol version used for the communication between two participant agents. All differences are handled by explicit versioning of the protocol. This includes changes in details that are not motivated by the Dataspace Protocol itself but by semantic changes attached to the protocol version update.

Note: The previous version of the CX-0018 standard had a bug. The actual version used previously was DSP version v0.8 which MUST be used as key for referring to the previous version in the version metadata endpoint.

Based on this constraint, backward compatibility is handled by the mechanism specified in section 2.7.

A Provider using the older standard version might neither provide discovery information in the DID document, nor provide the version metadata endpoint. In such cases, the Consumer Participant Agent SHOULD assume the Providers Participant Agent to use the old protocol version and the centralized discovery mechanism to find the Participant Agents base endpoint.

4 REFERENCES

4.1 NORMATIVE REFERENCES

Dataspace Protocol

The Dataspace Protocol is an external reference. A Participant Agent MUST implement the referenced version to comply to this standard version.

• Dataspace Protocol (DSP) version 2025-01

Decentralized Claims Protocol

The Decentralized Claims Protocol is an external reference. A Participant Agent MUST implement the referenced version to comply to this standard version.

• Decentralized Claims Protocol (DCP) version 1.0. Especially relevant is the Verifiable Presentation Protocol

RFC 6749

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749#section-6

Decentralized Identifiers (DID)

• Decentralized Identifiers W3C standard

CX-Specific Credentials

• CX-0050 CX-Specific Credentials

DID Document

• CX-0049 DID Document

Policy Constraints for Data Exchange

• CX-0152 Policy Constraints for Data Exchange

CX Operating Model

• CX Operating Model

4.2 NON-NORMATIVE REFERENCES

This section is non-normative

• Connector Kit

4.3 REFERENCE IMPLEMENTATIONS

This section is non-normative

• Tractus-X EDC

ANNEXES

FIGURES

Figure 1: Framework of data exchange

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