A contract comprehensively regulates which rules apply to which data (asset) for the parties involved.
A contract combines policies and the asset:
Policies - To define who uses what and when for what purpose and for how long.
Asset Selector - Selects the required asset using its unique ID. The asset itself links to the submodel which contains the required data.
In its entirety, the contract uses the policies to define which rights the recipient should have to the asset.
A contract is defined for exactly one transfer (share data or get data) and basically has 2 phases:
the negotiation phase - Is referred to as contract negotiation in the Dataspace OS.
the approval phase - Is referred to as a contract agreement in the Dataspace OS.
During the respective phases, the parties have the option of approving, rejecting or terminating current contracts.
The status of negotiations or current contracts (i.e. assets are being transferred) can be tracked in the views Contract Agreements and Contract Negotiations.
You can check the details of a specific contract at any time in Contract Definitions.