ASPIS prototype for causal chains of space weather phenomena

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) funded a project to design and develop an archive prototype for the ASI SPace weather InfraStructure (ASPIS). The project, CAESAR (Comprehensive Space Weather Studies for the ASPIS Prototype Realization) created a prototype aiming at unifying multiple Space Weather (SWE) resources through a flexible and adaptable architecture, allowing scientists to adopt an integrated approach, encompassing the whole chain of phenomena from the Sun to the Earth up to planetary environments. In this contribution we present various aspects and stages of the CAESAR project from its design phase to the final prototype. The definition of a template (metadata schema) to collect metadata or the resources (products) contributed to the prototype and management. The management of those same metadata documents through the development of a dedicated tool (ProSpecT, Product Specification Template, using JSON and JSONForms). The challenges in keeping it updated while helping the research community in providing both data and data description. The definition of a set of constraints to handle datasets and their metadata in a homogenized way (as much as possible), identifying potential common data formats and reference frames to follow a chain of phenomena from the Sun to the interplanetary medium up to Earth or planetary surfaces. The actual design and implementation of the prototype archive, its ingestion system and API considerations. The design and development of a web base graphical user interface to enable science research on top of the prototype archive, as well as the development of a dedicated python module (ASPISpy) for advanced data investigation and easier integration with other community drive software. The automation of documentation of the contributed resources (data collections, software tools, modules) from the machine-readable templated documents. All of the above aspects will be presented, highlighting challenges and specific solutions, as well as potential future evolution of the prototype into the actual archive infrastructure for ASPIS.