Federated and Distributed data Sharing Appliance (FDSA), an integral part of the Alzheimer's Disease Workbench product suite, addresses this challenge. It provides both those holding data sets and researchers conducting analyses a foundation for widespread data sharing. Ultimately, FDSA will help the research community convert data into breakthroughs that transform people’s health.

The FDSA is a plug-in for data stores that enables data contributors to easily publish remote datasets, making previously inaccessible research data available for discovery and analysis. Data contributors add their metadata to the AD Workbench catalog so that researchers can discover, request, and access these remote datasets. FDSA supports interoperability across platforms while prioritizing data security. Designed with a user-centric approach, it minimizes the workload for data contributors while allowing them to manage data access requests and audit analyses in a streamlined way.

Through the AD Workbench, researchers can discover FDSA-enabled remote datasets, request access to those datasets, use a tool called Query Builder to perform remote queries and conduct research analyses from AD Workspace.

FDSA incorporates the following third-party components, each integral to the appliance's functionality:

Docker - For containerization and deployment. nginx - For reverse proxy, load balancing, and web server functionalities. Python - The core programming language for backend services. PostgreSQL - The primary relational database management system. Flask - A web framework for building APIs and web services. Docker Compose - For orchestrating multi-container Docker applications. Hasura GraphQL Engine - For providing a real-time GraphQL API. Keycloak - For managing authentication and authorization processes.