The Marketplace module allows organizations to create a data marketplace around their data products, enabling structured access requests, approvals, and governance. This guide explains how to configure the module, focusing on user roles, provider setup, and custom metadata for access requests.

Understanding the User Personas

Three main user personas interact with the Marketplace, each with distinct roles and responsibilities:

• Consumer: Requests access to data products through the marketplace. Consumers can browse available data products, submit access requests with required justifications, and manage their existing access permissions. Ideally, they provide clear business cases and intended usage details when requesting access.

• Provider: Reviews and approves access requests related to specific data products. Providers are responsible for evaluating access requests, ensuring compliance with data governance policies, setting appropriate access levels, and monitoring usage patterns. They also maintain product documentation and handle user inquiries about their data products.

• Marketplace Administrator: Oversees the entire marketplace configuration, manages roles, and has full access to data and reporting. They configure global marketplace settings, define custom metadata fields, manage user permissions, monitor platform usage metrics, and ensure the marketplace aligns with organizational data governance policies. Administrators can also intervene in access workflows when needed and generate comprehensive usage reports.

Configuring the Provider Role

Users are recognized as Providers for specific data products based on the responsibilities assigned to them. When an access request is submitted, Blindata automatically checks for any defined responsibilities associated with the target data product. These responsibilities determine which users will be notified to review and approve the request. If no responsibilities are configured, no reviewer will be notified, and a warning will be shown to the requester to highlight that the request may remain unattended.

Configuring the Provider role involves two main steps:

1. Create a Role for Data Product Responsibilities

• Use the Stewardship module to define a new responsibility role.
• Configure the role to apply specifically to Data Product entities.
• Assign users to this role based on their responsibility for managing or stewarding the specific data products.

2. Configure the Role in Marketplace Settings

• As a Marketplace Administrator, access the Marketplace Configuration settings.
• Specify the newly created Data Product Manager role as the one responsible for acting as Provider in access workflows.
• This setup ensures that access requests for each data product are automatically routed to the responsible users.

More details about managing role and responsabilities can be found in the dedicated Stewardship & Responsabilities Guide .

Adding Custom Metadata to Access Requests

To collect additional information during access requests—such as cost centers or intended purposes of data access—you can configure custom properties for Access Requests:

1. Navigate to Settings → Custom Properties.
2. Create new custom properties that apply to the Access Request resource.
3. Mark fields as mandatory if required, to ensure consistent data collection.
4. These additional metadata fields help organizations gain visibility into the purpose and context of data usage.

More details about managing custom properties can be found in the dedicated Custom Properties Guide .

Marketplace Roles and Permissions Overview

The Marketplace permissions model directly reflects the three user personas, with each role having specific permissions aligned with their responsibilities. Consumers are granted basic viewing and request capabilities through MARKETPLACE_VIEWER, Providers can manage their data products and handle access requests with MARKETPLACE_EDITOR, and Marketplace Administrators have full control over the platform with MARKETPLACE_ADMIN. This clear separation ensures that users have the appropriate level of access to perform their designated functions.

For detailed permission mappings, see the Permissions List page.

Integration with External Access Management Systems

For organizations that need to automate access approvals or integrate the Marketplace with existing access management systems (e.g., ticketing systems, identity and access management platforms), the Marketplace module provides an extension point via the Control Plane Service of Open Data Mesh.

This extension point is realized through the Marketplace Executor, which allows you to customize and develop the integration logic required for your specific environment.

A starter project is available at:

➡️ https://github.com/opendatamesh-initiative/odm-platform-adapter-marketplace-executor-starter

You can use this starter as a foundation or choose your preferred technology stack to implement your integration. The only requirement is to conform to the Marketplace Executor API exposed by the platform, ensuring seamless communication between Blindata’s Marketplace and your external systems.

The minimum set of services required to enable this integration includes:

• Notification Service: Handles event delivery and notifications between services.
• Marketplace Service with Executor: Manages access request workflows and delegates execution to a customizable Marketplace Executor.
• Blindata Observer: Connects Blindata to the Open Data Mesh ecosystem and listens for relevant events.

More details can be found in the Data Ops Platform Architecture Overview .