EDC - Multiple EDC management and Catalog Federation

[DanielaWuensch]

Scenario: A data provider operates multiple EDC connectors and data catalogs

Problem: If a data consumer is unaware of which EDC holds the desired offer, he needs to iterate over all catalogs, that's quite inefficient.

Proposed solution: Concept to manage multiple EDCs to federate their catalogs and expose them in a unified manner is done here https://github.com/eclipse-edc/Connector/blob/main/docs/developer/management-domains/management-domains.md and need to be implemented

Impacted components

• Upstream EDC
• Tractus-X EDC
• DSP for get catalogue?
• CX-0018?

[jimmarino]

Management domains will help enable this. However, the reason there are multiple URLs is because it was decided some time ago to have a central service that resolves connector URLs (emphasis on plural) for a participant. Before decentralized identities, this made sense because DIDs were not used. However, that is not the case anymore.

It's also worth noting that the current approach to resolving connector URLs is not aligned with the DSP and DCAT specifications, which embed endpoint information in DID documents and DCAT catalogs. In order to come up with a complete solution, we need the following:

1. Management domains
2. Federated Catalog integration with TX-EDC
3. A change to the core CX service

[stephanbcbauer]

Presented in the DRAFT Feature Freeze -> Committer is available
Impact on how the catalogue is provided

[lgblaumeiser]

Hi @paullatzelsperger @rafaelmag110 , last time we talked about the issue, there was a reference to a documentation PR which needed to be merged. Is this done? Could you then please close this issue? Thanks!

[rafaelmag110]

Hi @lgblaumeiser, that documentation PR is not related to this issue in specific. This can be closed.