Introduction#

Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server (ESS) is a Solid Pod Server. That is, ESS provides/hosts Solid Pods (where Pods are data storage locations) in accordance with the Solid specification.

Features#

Pod Management#

ESS’ Pod provisioning service creates Pods. Pods are where users store their data, both Resource Description Framework (RDF) data and non-RDF data. With ESS’ support for the Solid Protocol specification, navigating, creating, deleting and editing Solid Resources within a Pod is directly supported via the standard HTTP interfaces.

In addition, ESS provides a Query (QPF) endpoint to query RDF (Resource Description Framework) data in the Pod.

For more information, see:

Identity#

WebID#

ESS’ WebID service issues and manages WebIDs. A WebID is a URI/IRI that uniquely identifies a person, company, organization, etc.

In addition, starting in ESS 2.0, Pods and WebIDs are created independently of each other, and WebID profiles are no longer hosted on the Pods. This change allows for multiple Pods per WebID, prevents users from locking themselves out of their Pods, and allows users to obtain their WebID or Pods from alternative providers.

For more information, see WebID service.

Client ID#

An application identifies itself using a client identifier (Client ID). ESS supports the following Client ID types:

a URL that dereferences to a Client ID Document, or
a registered value (either through OIDC dynamic or static registration).

For more information, see:

Security#

ESS’ security features include:

Authentication to support login with any existing OIDC-compliant identity provider
Support for User Managed Access Grant 2.0 (UMA)
Support for Access Control Policies (ACP).
Support for Access Requests and Grants
Support for Auditing

For more information, see Security.

Notifications#

Added in version 1.1.

ESS provides a secure implementation of a WebSockets notification protocol. ESS WebSocket service sends asynchronous notifications upon changes to Resources. Applications can subscribe to a particular Resource, including a Container, and receive notifications upon changes to the subscribed Resource(s).

For more information, see WebSocket Notification Service.

Administrative Operations#

You can set up a centralized logging system to a backend logging system.

For more information, see Administration.

ESS Architecture#

ESS’ microservices architecture:

Enables support for highly available deployment configurations.
Enables simple scaling.

The following table lists the microservices:

Category	Microservices
Authentication	Solid OIDC Broker Service
Access Control	Authorization Service User Managed Access (UMA) Service Access Grant Service
Storage	Pod Provision Service Pod Storage Service
Entry/Landing	Start Service
Identity	WebID Service
Events	Notification Gateway Service WebSocket Notification Service
Query	Query Service

Support#

Inrupt offers up to 24/7 support for operators and developers with a commercial license for ESS.

See Inrupt Support Center.

Additional Information on Solid#

The Solid specification defines various Solid server/Pod behaviors, such as those related to: