Business context¶
dataLOFT is built on the principles of Gaia-X: sovereignty, interoperability, and trustworthiness in data sharing. The platform operates as a federated data space. There is no central authority. Participants discover each other through a shared catalogue, negotiate contracts directly, and exchange data under agreed terms.
Roles¶
Five roles operate in the dataLOFT data space. In practice, a single organisation may assume more than one role, but each role is clearly defined within a given transaction.
| Role | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Data Owner | An individual whose data is held by a provider. The data owner can grant or withhold consent for sharing their data. | A patient whose ECG records are held by their GP practice. |
| Data Provider | An organisation that holds data belonging to data owners and shares it via the platform. | A hospital, GP practice, or operator of a medical device application. |
| Data Consumer | An organisation that requests and uses data from providers. | A research institute running a clinical study. |
| Federator | The operator of the management services. A Federator is a participant whose DID is registered as a federator in FC-Service. This registration grants the ability to approve new participant requests and manage catalogue membership. The Federator enables data exchange but does not participate in it directly. | The dataLOFT platform team. |
| Orchestrator | A neutral actor with a coordinating and regulatory function, ensuring that participants comply with the conventions of the data space. | A clearing house or regulatory body. |
Service tiers¶
The platform is divided into two service tiers:
Management Services form the control plane. They handle identity verification, catalogue discovery, contract negotiation, and data transfer coordination. They enable data exchange but are not directly involved in the data itself.
Data Services form the data plane. They are built on top of management services by data providers and implement the actual data access logic. r-squared is the reference data service demonstrating this pattern.
