Data Spaces

This article provides a high-level definition of data spaces and summarizes related key research aspects. We raise fundamental questions about data spaces and search for answers in the literature.

AI*P: This literature research was conducted manually, and Perplexity was then used to check whether we had overlooked any important aspects.

What is a Data Space?

The goal of data spaces, as introduced in Franklin et al., 2005 [1], is to provide base functionality over various data sources without the need for dedicated data integration and data exchange systems. Nonetheless, it should offer the tools to create tighter integration of data sources as necessary. Therefore, a Data Space Support Platform (DSSP) must support all the data in the data space, offering integrated means of searching, querying, updating, and administering the data space. However, the DSSP is not in full control of its data and may only return best-effort answers, as the underlying systems may also be modified through other interfaces or generally unavailable.

While this initial definition provides abstractions for data management across organizations with bilateral contracts, the concept of data spaces evolved to today’s comprehensive infrastructures for sovereign data exchange. According to the CEN Workshop Agreement 18125 from July 2024 [4], a data space is a framework that enables data transactions between participants, ensuring interoperability and trust between participants based on common policies and enabling services. Therefore, modern data spaces extend beyond data management for heterogeneous data sources [3].

The roles of participants in a data space are generally divided into data providers and data consumers. However, note that these roles are not mutually exclusive, meaning that a participant can take on both the role of provider and consumer. The concept of data exchange in the data space can be summarized in three steps:

1. The data consumer searches the data catalog, which was published in the data space by the data provider and includes meta information about its data as well as respective usage policies, to find relevant data.
2. The data provider and the data consumer establish contracts within the data space regarding the data exchange.
3. The data provider transfers the data, as agreed in the contracts, to the consumer.

Why do we need Data Spaces? (Problem formulation)

As numerous processes become increasingly data-driven, the demands of “data everywhere” expand rapidly. Since data is typically available on various data sources with limited integration across systems, the challenge emerges of managing and accessing large amounts of distributed data consistently and efficiently [1, 2]. Fitting these heterogeneous data collections into a single data model or system is considerably difficult. Traditional data management approaches address this challenge by integrating each data source individually, involving continuous development workload as new data sources are added. The initial concept of data spaces [1] overcomes this development burden by identifying the scope and taking control to provide principled management functionality across the underlying systems. With the evolvement of the data space concept, various additional challenges emerged, including data sovereignty and security [5].

What does a Data Space entail? (Components and services)

Participants

The participant classes are differentiated based on their role. In addition to the two key roles of the (1) Data Provider and the (2) Data Consumer, there are also the classes (3) Data Space Governance Authority, which governs the data space, and (4) Service Provider, which provides certain services (discussed below) to the data space [3]. Note that a participant can take on multiple roles.

Services

Services enable data in a data space to be identifiable, findable, and usable. The DSSC Blueprint 2.0 [3] distinguishes between three classes of services:

• Participant Agent Services for credential control, catalogue construction, policy enforcement, and data source integration;
• Federation Services for credential, identity, and compliance verification, catalogue management, and provenance;
• Value-Creation Services for data analysis and AI functionalities.

Interactions

Kovach et al. [5] structure the interaction types in two distinct planes: The control plane and the data plane. Interactions in the control plane involve the processes of joining the data space, discovering the data resources, and establishing the usage contracts, whereas the data plane includes the actual sharing of data resources.

Key Technical Components

• Data Source: Generate/provide data
• Connector: Interfaces on building blocks to enable communication with other components
• Communication Protocol: Protocol that enables standardized communication between connectors (e.g., the Dataspace Protocol (DSP) [6])
• Contract: Usage agreement between data provider and data consumer
• Trust Framework: Responsible for identifying and registering participants, as well as establishing trust and sovereignty among the participants
• Discovery Services: Publish catalogue of data offers and make it available to data consumers

Data Spaces w/ Federated Learning?

• [1] Franklin, M.J., Halevy, A.Y., & Maier, D. (2005). From databases to dataspaces: a new abstraction for information management. SIGMOD Rec., 34, 27-33.
• [2] Trautner, T., Zink, F., Slimane, E., Gräff, L., Wünschel, W., Breurather, M., Weigold, M., & Bleicher, F. (2025). A DATASPACE-DRIVEN EDGE COMPUTING AND FEDERATED LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR SENSORY TOOLING SYSTEMS. MM Science Journal.
• [3] Data Spaces Support Centre Blueprint 2.0
• [4] CEN Workshop Agreement 18125
• [5] Kovach, A., Montalvillo-Mendizabal, L., Lanza, J., Sotres, P., & Urbieta, A. (2026). Understanding data spaces: A Systematic Mapping Study of foundations, technical building blocks, and sectoral adoption. Comput. Sci. Rev., 59, 100819.

• [6] [Dataspace Protocol 2024-1

  Dataspace Protocol

  IDS Knowledge Base](https://docs.internationaldataspaces.org/ids-knowledgebase/dataspace-protocol/)