5.3 Research Data Australia (RDA)

This section explains how Research Data Australia (RDA) is integrated with the testbed system as a metadata broker.

The following flowchart illustrates the conversion process for RDA queries:

rda-flowchart rda-flowchart

Step-by-Step Flow

  1. From the Dashboard’s Catalog Browser, users enable the RDA Broker and enter search keywords. The dashboard sends this request to the backend server.

  2. The backend server forwards the query to the two endpoints below of the currently selected dataspace connector:

    1. /api/ids/search - Used for plain-text keyword searches. The connector creates a SPARQL query containing the keyword and retrieval variables.

    2. /api/ids/query - Accepts an already defined SPARQL query formatted by the backend to retrieve detailed information for each result from the previous search using the given ID.

  3. The RDA Broker parses these queries into JavaScript objects by analysing operators such as FILTER, VALUES, and STRSTARTS to extract the search parameters required by the RDA getMetadata API. It searches for all possible entries (*i.e.*, fl: "*") since filtering entries is not the intended purpose of SPARQL.

  4. The RDA Broker sends the query to RDA’s getMetadata API along with the user’s RDA API key. If no API key is provided or the key is invalid, an error is returned. Otherwise, the result is parsed into RDF or JSON-LD format based on the SPARQL query type.

  5. For the connector to accept the returned result from the RDA Broker, the Broker must obtain a valid Dynamic Attribute Token (DAT) from the DAPS. It either requests a new DAT by sending its key pair to the DAPS (first use) or uses a cached token (previous search performed).

  6. The RDA Broker formats the results in a multipart format and returns them along with the valid DAT. The connector then parses the response and validates the DAT before finally sending the response back to the Dashboard.

  7. The Dashboard displays the search results for user review.

    Development Note

    The RDA Broker does not allow a user to consume the returned data at this time. The RDA-Broker is provided as a means to evaluate how metadata stored within the RDA system could be utilised in a Dataspace environment in the future.