The FAIR-EASE project explored both server-side mechanisms, which aim to improve performance, scalability and interoperability in heterogeneous data infrastructures, and client-side usage, which focus on simplifying data access for users, particularly those without in-depth technical expertise, but also the robustness of applications over time.
By taking these two perspectives into account, the project ensures that data can be accessed smoothly, efficiently and transparently, whether through automated workflows or user-friendly interfaces tailored to real scientific use cases.
For the server-side part we evaluated four technical solutions: S3 / ARCO combination for serverless and cloud-ready subsetting, STAC / OpenEO combination for unified data access and remote process on datacubes, Beacon for efficient data access and data harmonisation capabilities, and Apache Iceberg for managing large-scale tabular data.