Implementation and Management Approach

The initiative has been implemented in 4 main phases:

1. A set of Data Reporting Obligations, based on legislative instruments issued by the European Commission, has been defined by the EEA other institutions. These obligations are stored in a Reporting Obligations Database (ROD).
2. As a second step, the EEA and other institutions would create the Definitions, i.e a set of protocols for providing the typology of data defined by the obligations (i.e. which format, which structure, etc). The Definitions are stored in Data Dictionary (DD). 
3. Based on the above mentioned Reporting Obligations and Data Definitions, the Member States would report their data via different channels: topic-specific Data Exchange Modules (DEM), or MS Excel or MS Access files sent via e-mail, or they would log them in the Central Data Reposiroty (CDR). This latter system provides all kinds of ways to analyze the quality of the reported data and extract them into different formats for further analysis and aggregation. 
4. In a latest stage, all data becomes user-friendly information published on EEA websites.

The above phases are monitored by the Reportnet search engine called Content Registry which enables to quickly find data at all levels of aggregation.

Technology solution

The Reportnet architecture places into relationship various components and technologies that comprise a framework of data standards, interoperability mechanisms, and other permanent structures on which businesses processes may be successfully implemented.

The software development has been based on two principles: Open Source and Modularity. Open source development enables code reuse, protection of investment, peer review and real competition for the tendering of development by making available all information and tools inside Reportnet. General-purpose components are based on data and technology standards that can be re-used throughout the main application; the system can be easily modified or extended and changes to an individual module can be made without affecting functionality of other modules.

Detailed information on the system architecture are listed below:

• Infrastructure/System architecture: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Java SE, Python, WWW, HTTP, XML-RPC, XML, XML Schema, RDF, OWL, XForms, XQuery, Xpath, Semantic Web, Linked Data, Web Services.
• Technological description of information services : SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), REST (Representational State Transfer), XML-RPC (remote procedure call).
• Elements of Semantic Web: RDF (Resource Description Framework), RDF Schema (a knowledge representation language).
• Others: automatic reported data quality checks, automatic conversions from reported data into various output formats, automatic data aggregation with the help of an aggregation database that builds on the concept of Linked Data.

Note: Reportnet does not use SOAP, WSDL, UDDI or any other technology in that family.