2024-06-19

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Summary of development activities

Summary of ongoing development activities.

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X-Road 8 PoC status

The full overview of the PoC project is available here.

The first X-Road 8 PoC was completed at the end of May. During the PoC, the following features were implemented:

• Support for SOAP and REST services.

• Support for signing, timestamping and logging messages.

• Support for defining access permissions using ODRL (including migrating current access permissions to ODRL).

• Support for TLS between the Security Servers (control + data plane).

• Caching and reusing JWT tokens generated as a result of a successful contract negotiation phase.

• Support for “light context” - consuming services without a Security Server on the consumer side.

• Publishing DCAT service descriptions and collecting them centrally using the EDC Federated Catalog component.

• Storing credentials in the EDC Identity Hub and using them in authentication and access control during the data exchange process.

At the beginning of the PoC project, the main question was: can X-Road be transformed into a data space technology in a backwards-compatible manner? Based on the outcome, the short answer is yes.

In practice, the answer means that the project didn't discover any significant roadblocks that would make reaching the goal impossible. Instead, the project discovered many questions and areas that require further investigation. In other words, it seems that the goal can be reached, but at this point, we don't know all the steps required to get there. Also, there are several areas that we haven’t looked into yet, e.g., federation, operational, and environmental monitoring.

Open

The aim is to make X-Road 8 compatible with the data space protocol stack. One of the challenges is that the stack is not stable yet, and many of the key specifications are currently being defined. It means waiting for the first stable version or using a draft version. Both alternatives come with some challenges. However, the positive thing is that it's still possible to contribute to developing the specifications by collaborating with the data spaces community. For example, NIIS is a Supporter Member of the Eclipse Dataspace Working Group that’s currently working on the following specifications:

• Dataspace Decentralized Claims Protocol (DCP)

• Data Rights Policies Profile (DRP)

• Dataspace Protocol (DSP)

NIIS will continue to work with the topics discovered during the PoC and make more detailed plans for the production-level implementation. The X-Road JIRA has a more detailed list of ongoing tasks.

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Open topics

• X-Road 7.5.0 beta now available, release notes at:

  • https://nordic-institute.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XRDKB/pages/541491202

• Call for speakers for the X-Road Community Event 2024 is open:

  • https://x-road.global/xroad-community-event-2024

Next meetings

• Meeting 25, August 21 2024, 15:00-16:00 (EEST, UTC +3)

• Meeting 26, September 18 2024, 15:00-16:00 (EEST, UTC +3)

• Meeting 27, October 23 2024, 15:00-16:00 (EEST, UTC +3)

• Meeting 28, November 20 2024, 15:00-16:00 (EET, UTC +2)

• Meeting 29, December 18 2024, 15:00-16:00 (EET, UTC +2)

• Meeting 30, January 22 2025, 15:00-16:00 (EET, UTC +2)

• Meeting 31, February 19 2025, 15:00-16:00 (EET, UTC +2)

• Meeting 32, March 19 2025, 15:00-16:00 (EET, UTC +2)