Skip to content

Asset Explorer portal

The AEP is based on the open-source CKAN data portal. Its default functionality includes multi-tenancy support where SMEs/Orgs can create an organisation profile and basic web-presence. Features include:

  • organisation profile with company logo and contact details
  • digital asset publishing under an SME’s organisation profile
  • individual user-profiles
  • ability to follow datasets so you are notified of updates/changes
  • asset audit trail
  • dataset tagging with labels
  • a file management API for scripting the management of datasets
  • advanced dataset search.

Several AEP customisations have been developed to improve the user experience. These include

  • fine-grained assen sharing granularity
  • multi-part file upload support for large files, also supports upload pause and restart
  • surfacing of sensor's streaming datasets with a downloadable preview of the latest streamed data
  • creation of shareable "pre-signed URLs" recommended for large file sizes
  • UI enhancements for improved user experience

Datasets & Digital Assets

The AEP supports both static files of any format (e.g. zip, pdf, xls, json, csv, binary formats) and sensor/IoT device streaming data. A single dataset consists of one or more individual files. For several common static file formats, a file preview can be viewed directly in the portal. For streaming data, previews of the last successfully streamed messages can be downloaded via the portal. Files for a single dataset can be uploaded manually using the AEP user interface.

Static Datasets

Sample Dataset:

Title: CNC Power Benchmarks
- Description: This datset shows power bencmarks for three CNC machines.
- Tags: Bencmarking, CNC, Manufacturing
- README.pdf
- sampleMessageFormat.json
- rawDataA.zip
- rawDataB.zip
- rawDataC.zip

Streaming Datasets

We recommend using the Data Downloader portal () to create one or more zip files of your streamed data from your IoT sensors. These files can be uploaded and published for subsequent download in the AEP portal. Dataset owners can choose to create files for all of the streamed data up to a particular or current date-time, or for a particular date-time window or set of windows, perhaps showing an event of interest. Note that users can follow datasets to be informed of subsequent updates or new file uploads.

Dataset Visibility

For security purposes, datasets are not shared by default. Dataset owners need to set the visibility option for their datasets. The AEP supports 4 main levels of asset visibility:

  • Public: Assets are fully public and downloadable without an XDEP SSO account.
  • Protected: Asset previews can be viewed but can't be downloaded without an XDEP SSO account.
  • Private with sharing 'by invite': Assets are private but can be shared with with other XDEP user accounts on an per-account basis.
  • Fully Private (default): Assets are not shared beyond the asset owner.

Downloading Datasets

For datasets that have been shared (i.e., public, protected, or shared by invite), you can download constituent dataset files directly from the portal. For large files and for sharing with others outside of the XDEP SSO domain, we recommend creating a share link. The share link will expire after 24 hours:

  1. for a particular dataset file, click the 'Explore' button and select 'More information'
  2. click the 'Create share link' button to copy a pre-signed URL
  3. paste the share link into a new browser tab to download the file