Capabilities#

In order to offer a unified form of communication, the MarketPlace has defined a list of typical functionalities, which we call capabilities, that a user might expect and an application can choose to support. Each capability will have a name and a definition of the expected parameters and errors it can generate.

A capability is associated with an operation ID (capability and operation ID should match) and a specification of a unique REST-API endpoint + HTTP method. For instance, there can only be one capability under the /dataset path for the get method.

Capabilities are case sensitive.

Capability types#

Different types of capabilities are clustered into groups based on their purpose. Thus, we can define applications as:

Data source: Applications for online data repositories which store generic data that can be used in different use cases. Examples of such data repositories are databases within Materials Cloud and NOMAD.
Data sink: Applications that offer persistent data storage services.
Transformation: Applications that manipulate data. A simulation tool that generates data is an example of such an application.
Front page: Applications that have a web page.
System: Capabilities related to operability of applications.

The MarketPlace will be able to automatically infer the type of the application to the users, while recognizing the functionalities that are supported by it. This allows the MarketPlace to use the applications in workflows that require apps with specific capabilities. However, the capabilities are not enforced, and an application may choose to implement a mixed subset of capabilities.

Since the API is uniform, it is easy for the user to switch one application with another in case it is favourable.

Integration levels#

The information returned by the applications (payload) is not restricted, and can be varied in format and readability. To differentiate the degree of interoperability an application enables, the following levels have been defined.

Level 1 integration#

It is the default integration level, which is simply achieved by adhering to the capabilities defined by the platform. Any application registered to the platform must (at least) comply to Level 1 integration.

Level 2 integration#

This level tries to enforce a higher degree of interoperability between applications by making sure the data sent is understandable, both by humans and machines.

Mappings between the data and ontology concepts should exist, and the corresponding mapping be sent out with the data in the headers, e.g.:

{
    'x-semantic-mappings': 'MappingA'
}

The id can then be used to query the semantic mapping capability for the specific mapping.

List of supported capabilities#

These are the currently supported capabilities:

Type	Method	Capability	Description
FrontPage	get	frontend	Open the frontend of the app
System	get	globalSearch	Respond to global search queries
System	get	heartbeat	Check if the application is running and available
DataSource, DataSink	get	listCollections	List all collections
DataSource	get	listDatasets	List all datasets in a collection
DataSink	put	createOrUpdateCollection	Create or update a collection
DataSink	delete	deleteCollection	Delete an empty collection
DataSource	head	getCollectionMetadata	Get a collection’s metadata
DataSink	put	createCollection	Create a collection
DataSink	put	createDataset	Create a dataset
DataSink	post	createDatasetMetadata	Create a dataset’s metadata
DataSource	get	getDataset	Get a dataset
DataSink	put	createOrReplaceDataset	Create or replace a dataset
DataSink	post	createOrReplaceDatasetMetadata	Create or replace a dataset’s metadata
DataSink	delete	deleteDataset	Delete a dataset
DataSource	head	getDatasetMetadata	Get a dataset’s metadata
DataSource, DataSink	get	listSemanticMappings	List all semantic mappings
DataSource, DataSink	get	getSemanticMapping	Get a specific semantic mapping
Transformation	get	getTransformationList	List all transformations
Transformation	post	newTransformation	Create a new transformation
Transformation	get	getTransformation	Get a transformation
Transformation	delete	deleteTransformation	Delete a transformation
Transformation	patch	updateTransformation	Update a transformation
Transformation	get	getTransformationState	Get the state of a transformation

Capabilities

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