Create a data product with the URL method

With Data Product Exchange, you can create a data product from one or more public URLs.

Required roles
Collaborator role: Editor

The URL method can be used if your data assets are available from a public URL and you do not have a secure connection to the data source. You are the owner of all the data products that you create. Only the owner of a data product can edit, publish, and retire their data products. A data product has only one owner.

Enter the URL and assign a name

The URL is the location where your assets are hosted. You can combine files and URLs in a data product. The limit for the total number of items in a data product is 20.

To enter the URL for your data product:

  1. Select New data product to get started.
  2. Enter a descriptive name for the data product (required).
  3. Choose Enter a URL as the method for creating a data product.
  4. Enter a valid public URL where data assets and other files are hosted. The URL requires the form: https://url.domain. A secure, TLS encrypted URL (https) is required.
  5. Enter a unique name for the item to help identify it in orders.
  6. Click Next to continue.

Review the delivery method and create a draft

For the URL data products, the delivery method is automatically set to Open URL, which allows consumers to open the URL to access assets.

To review the delivery method:

  1. Review the delivery method. Open URL is the only delivery method available for URL-based data products.
  2. Click Create draft.

Complete the data product details

Review the product details and continue authoring your data product on the product details tabs:

  • Data product contents - Add more items and provide a description of each item. Review the contents of files in the data viewer.
  • Recommended usage - Select a primary business domain (required). Enter a description of the data product to display on the home page. This description is searchable by the consumers.
  • Data contract - Upload a PDF or enter a URL to provide the terms and conditions for using the data product. (required)

Complete the data product contents

On the Data product contents tab, review the contents of your draft data product. From this tab, you enter a custom description for each item and add more items to the draft.

The Data product contents tab contains the following:

  • A list of the items in the data product

  • An option to add more items

  • A customizable description of the features of the data in About this item

  • A customizable description of the source and collection methodology for the data in Origin

  • Type of the item

Add more items

Click Add item to browse for files or to add another URL to your draft data product.

The rules for items in a data product are:

  • Data products can contain a mixture of URLs and files.
  • URLs must be TLS encrypted URL (https). The URL requires the form: https://url.domain.
  • The limit for the total number of items is 20.
  • The supported file types are: .csv, .txt, and .xlst.

Complete a description and origin for each item

In About this item, you can enter a brief description for each item to help consumers understand the features of the data product. Following are suggestions for the item description:

  • Dimensions (or business terms)
  • Metrics (or features)
  • Data format
  • Dataset size (number of rows)
  • Entities covered (unique values)
  • Values distributions
  • Time range covered
  • Resolution, granularity
  • Quality scores (explained, with calculations)
  • Data sample
  • Potential join keys

For Origin, enter the collection methods and source for the data.

Follow these steps to enter the item descriptions:

  1. Click the Edit icon to open the built-in text editor.
  2. Enter and format your text using the text editor.
  3. Click Preview to view the text.
  4. Click Save draft to save the changes.
  5. To discard your text, click Cancel.

Assign a business domain (required)

You must assign a primary business domain to the data product. Business domains provide a taxonomy for your data products to help consumers find the product they need.

To select a business domain:

  1. Click Select a business domain to display the available business domains and select one as the primary domain.
  2. Save the draft.

Add a Data contract (required)

The data contract provides the terms and conditions for using the data product. You either upload a PDF file or provide a link to a URL. For PDFs, a bucket must be configured on IBM Cloud Object Storage. The maximum size for the PDFs is 50 MB.

The URLs for the data contract must be publicly accessible.

Click Save draft to save the changes.

Publish your data product

Publishing your data product makes it available on Data Product Exchange. Review the draft carefully before publishing as the data product cannot be edited after it is published.

  1. Click Publish.
  2. View the home page to confirm the data product was published.

Learn more

Parent topic: Introduction to publishing data products