Dataweb
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The Dataweb is a new approach to distributed data sharing that applies the proven REST architecture principles of the World Wide Web to the sharing and linking of machine-readable data across domains and applications. This architecture is being pursued by the OASIS XDI Technical Committee in development of the XDI trusted data sharing protocol.
The Dataweb is also an open source project started in 1995 to provide access to statistical data in the same way that the current world wide web provides access to documents. The data browser for the DataWeb is Data FERRETT (Federated Electronic Research Review Extraction Tablulation Tool) The url for this work can be found at http://www.thedataweb.org.
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[edit] How the Dataweb Differs from the World Wide Web
The Dataweb will work very much like today's Web, except it will:
- Link people and organizations in addition to machines and documents,
- Support persistent links that won't break as people and organizations move and change addresses, and
- Address the privacy and trust issues that plague today's Web by building authority, authentication, and authorization directly into the fabric.
The result is that unlike the primarily public and anonymous links available over today's Web, links on the Dataweb will enable private, trusted, and bi-directional data sharing relationships approaching the same level of intimacy as real-world relationships.
[edit] The Three Key Building Blocks
Three key building blocks of the Dataweb are:
- XRIs - A new OASIS specification for URI-compatible abstract identifiers used to identify and share resources across domains and applications. XRIs offer several key data sharing features not found in conventional URIs.
- XDI documents (Dataweb pages) - a single XML "universal" schema format in which any XML-encoded data (including XML documents in other schema formats) can be shared independent of the application or domain from which the data originated.
- Link contracts - XDI documents than govern the sharing of other XDI documents, including authentication, authorization, privacy (data usage), synchronization, and termination.
[edit] Dataweb Standards
Dataweb standards follow the precedent of Web standards, as shown in the table below:
| Standard | Web | Dataweb |
| Addressing | URIs | XRIs |
| Data Representation | HTML | XML/XDI |
| Data Interchange | HTTP | XDI/HTTP, XDI/SOAP |
[edit] The Social Web
The Dataweb approach to a globally-distributed data sharing network models the real-world mechanism of social contracts and legal contracts that bind civilized people and organizations in the real world today. So Dataweb technology and standards can be a key enabler of the Social Web. Public services based on the Dataweb and Social Web models are under development by an international non-profit organization, XDI.ORG.
