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Publication & discovery#

Part of the LDT Governance and Trust Framework — instantiates the iSHARE Data Space Template block Publication & discovery (© iSHARE Foundation, see Legal notices).

Purpose#

The catalogue: where offerings are published, found and trusted — scope, governance, architecture and interoperability of discovery.

LDT instantiation — where we stand#

  • Catalogue of the Marketplace of the EU LDT Toolbox (WP6, Nunsys): the LDT's primary discovery surface; listing requires a valid participant credential, a policy-complete description, and — for certified badges — conformance evidence from the ITB-S.
  • Architecture — decided: offerings are catalogued centrally. The TM Forum product catalogue of the Marketplace is the single authoritative source for them (PD4 v1.0 §4, below), which closes the earlier "federated publication with a central index" leaning for the offering layer. Data stays federated: each site keeps its own broker or catalogue and grants access at the source, and the Marketplace entry links to the public offering page, never to a download.
  • Public visibility: open-tier offerings are publicly browsable (city transparency); restricted/commercial tiers require authentication.
  • Cross-space interoperability: DCAT-AP alignment keeps the LDT harvestable by national/EU portals where the cities want it.

Marketplace catalogue (PD4 §4)#

Offerings are stored in a TM Forum product catalogue, the single authoritative source. Each offering carries its credential requirements (accepted credential type) as ordinary characteristics, so credential-bearing products need no separate discovery mechanism. The catalogue is exposed read-only as DCAT-AP 3.0 (validated against the DCAT-AP SHACL shapes) and OGC API – Records. Only launched offerings are published, and entries link to the public offering page, never to a download.

Source: PD4 v1.0 §4 — text as in PD4 v0.95_merged (28 Oct 2026).

🧩 Building block requested — Owner: Nunsys (with iLabs)#

What we need: the architecture is settled by PD4 v1.0 §4 (TM Forum catalogue authoritative for offerings; site brokers for the data), so what remains is the harvesting mechanism for dataset descriptions that are not offerings, the listing/eligibility rules incl. how policy outcomes and conformance evidence affect visibility, and the lifecycle rules (versioning, retirement, PIDs).

Format: Markdown section in this page (merge request) · Due: 26 Sep 2026 (v0.5) · Status: OPEN

Guiding questions#

All 21 of the template's questions for this block, with the 6 LDT answer slots to fill, are on publication-and-discovery/guiding-questions.md. The digest below is the subset that most shapes this block.

  • Minimal index or rich repository; public or participants-only visibility; what metadata depth balances discoverability and trust?
  • Who governs the catalogue and how is access to publishing managed?
  • Federated, central-broker or hybrid; who operates and funds a central service and what does that mean for neutrality?
  • How are entries validated (certification, provenance) and are verification links exposed for trust decisions?

PD4 mapping#

Feeds PD4 v1.0 §4 (Marketplace catalogue) and §8 (remaining actions).