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DataPLANT was broadly present at 1st UC4B in Berlin

Fri Nov 22 2024

The first UC4B event, a two-day conference, was held in Berlin at Fraunhofer FOKUS. The event aimed to showcase the foundational services offered by Base4NFDI, enabling the audience to understand the service portfolio, explore how these services can integrate with the NFDI community, and critically assess their implications for technical interoperability and alignment with local policies. The interactive program included discussions on various services, insights from supporting institutions, and alignment with national and European infrastructures. Base4NFDI is an initiative focused on developing and providing shared research data management services for the NFDI community. The initiative employs an iterative three-step process to facilitate participatory rollout and ensure community consensus. By November 2024, Base4NFDI aims to have several basic services at varying levels of technical maturity.

DataPLANT actively participated in the event, presenting multiple posters and contributing to discussions:

  • Basic Service Proposal outline for GitLab as a shared resource: One of our posters highlighted a Base4NFDI service proposal centered on GitLab for code, documentation versioning, and sharing. This service reflects the consortium’s open collaboration model, addressing the needs of consortia requiring hubs for software and workflow development, material versioning, and collaborative sharing.
  • Flexible Cloud-Based RDM Services as blueprint for further architecture discussions: Another poster showcased DataPLANT’s cloud-based infrastructure, offering tools and services to support RDM of it’s target community. The flexible microservices architecture supports both on-premises deployments and potential integration into a shared NFDI infrastructure. The core component, the PLANTDataHUB, facilitates RDM workflows across the data lifecycle—from development to publication. Storage considerations were also emphasized, particularly for data security, protection, and scalability. Discussions focused on fostering collaboration with other NFDI consortia to identify required services and establish principles for service development and deployment, contributing to joint infrastructure efforts like Base4NFDI.
  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) - joint activity for e.g. remote full desktop training environments: A third poster, developed jointly with NFDI4BIOIMAGE, presented the current state of their VDI developments. This infrastructure could eventually serve as a basic service, enabling broader usability within the NFDI ecosystem.

On the second day, a presentation given by two DataPLANT team members covered the state of DataPLANT’s user management system. Built on established Community AAIs (CAAI), it integrates services like Life Sciences AAI and ORCID with local authentication through the central DataPLANT authentication service. The infrastructure leverages Keycloak, an AAI proxy developed by RedHat, to unify multiple authentication systems using modern protocols like OpenID Connect and SAML, enabling seamless identity brokering.

The conference attracted nearly 200 participants both on-site and online. It provided an excellent platform for engaging with colleagues during breaks and evening events. DataPLANT’s contributions were well-received, sparking valuable discussions on service interoperability, infrastructure development, and future collaborations within the NFDI ecosystem.