What is the PDC’s role? How do I start? The PDC [2.1] is an open-source component that participants run and install where they want (on premises or cloud). It acts as the participant’s “identity” and performs the Control Plane [5.1] verifications.
The Dataspace Connector (PDC) [2.1] is an open-source component that participants deploy and operate independently, either on premises or in the cloud. It represents the participant within the dataspace and acts as the participant’s technical identity, enabling secure and trusted interactions with others.
The PDC is responsible for performing the Control Plane [5.1] verifications. Through these verifications, the PDC ensures that all interactions comply with the dataspace’s security, governance, and trust requirements, including authentication, authorization, policy enforcement, and validation of trust relationships. Apart from taking part in the Control Plane level, it also participates in the Data Plane [5.1], which manages the real data transfer, that ultimately goes through the connector. This design enables to habilitate more advanced and complex use cases, such as service chains [5.0], in which data can go through intermediary services that perform different operations, such as transformation, analysis and data enrichment, before getting down to the final user, instead of exchanging through a peer-to-peer direct communication solely.
The PDC works as the participant’s entry point to the dataspace and it helps them to maintain full control of their data (identity, credentials and policies) while ensuring interoperability and compliance. By this model, data keeps being decentralized and supports data sovereignty.
To install the PDC, the participant needs to obtain an open-source component, the recommended way is using Docker and deploying it in the participant’s preferred environment. After this, the configuration of the identity, the credentials and the definition of the Control Plane must be enabled and is required to interact with other participants.
When the participant has successfully done these steps, the PDC is ready to establish trust relationships and perform Control Plane verifications. This allows the participant to securely join and operate within the dataspace.
