  A data-driven approach to elucidating the nature of the dark energy, in the
form of a joint analysis of a full set of cosmological parameters, utilizing
all available observational data is proposed. A parameterization of a
generalized dark energy is developed with the extension of fluid perturbation
theory to models which cross through an equation of state of -1. This
parameterization is selected to be general enough to admit a wide variety of
behavior, while still being physical and economical. A Fisher matrix analysis
with future high-precision CMB, cluster survey, and SNIa data suggests the
parameters will probably be resolvable in the foreseeable future. How
accurately the parameters can be determined depends sensitively on the nature
of the dark energy - particularly how significant of a fraction of the total
energy density it has been in the past. Parameter space will be sampled at a
large number of points, with cosmological information such as CMB, power
spectra, etc of each point being archived. Thus the likelihood functions of an
arbitrary set of experiments can be applied to parameter space with
insignificant new computational cost, making a wide variety of analyses
possible. The resulting tool for Analysis and Resolution of Dark-sector
Attributes, ARDA, will be highly versatile and adaptable. ARDA will allow the
scientific community to extract parameters with an arbitrary set of experiments
and theoretical priors, test for tension between classes of observations and
investigate the effectiveness of hypothetical experiments, while evolving in a
data-driven manner. A proof-of-concept prototype web-tool, \underbar{The Cosmic
Concordance Project}, is already available.
