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Subject: Introduction to dipal-discuss
Welcome to the dipal-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list! The purpose of this list is to discuss a possible new OASIS Technical Committee to develop a domain-independent language for expressing policy assertions, including those for web services. The proposed Domain-Independent Policy Assertion Language (DIPAL) TC would develop a language that would layer on top of any Boolean web services policy framework, including WS-Policy. The intent would be to make it work with whatever becomes the standard policy framework, whether that is WS-Policy or something else. Therefore, this activity addresses a different layer in the policy processing stack from WS-Policy and is complementary to such a policy framework language. The scope envisioned for the proposed OASIS TC is the development of a domain-independent language for expressing policy assertions, along with semantics for verifying such assertions, comparing or intersecting assertions over the same policy item from two different policies, and selecting preferred values from a set of permitted values. The language would provide a generic way of expressing conditions that particular domain-specific policy items must satisfy. The language would be designed to express policy assertions for use with any Boolean web services policy framework. That is, the language would express assertions over individual policy vocabulary items, but combining these assertions into a policy expressing acceptable combinations and alternatives would be relegated to a framework layer. The development of such a policy framework for combining individual policy assertions into policies is not within the proposed scope. The goal of the language is to facilitate interoperability and maintainability of web services policies. A single policy assertion module supporting this language should be able to verify, match, intersect, or perform preferred value selection using any assertions written in the language, from any domain. This means policy processors would not need new code modules for each new type of policy assertion that is required for a system or application. The policy framework may make use of policy assertions written in the domain-independent language as well as assertions written in other domain-specific languages, so the new language need not conflict with domain-specific Assertions that gain wide industry acceptance. If the discussion list ended with a proposal to form a new OASIS TC, we envision the TC operating under the "RF (Royalty Free) on Limited Terms" IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy. We also anticipate that one of the input documents to the proposed TC would be the draft "XACML-based Web Services Policy Constraints Language (WS-PolicyConstraints)" specification authored by Sun Microsystems and offered on royalty-free terms. This draft specification is available at http://research.sun.com/projects/xacml/ws-policy-constraints-current.pdf There are various resources related to the topic of this list at http://research.sun.com/projects/xacml/, including a slide presentation with speaker's notes, a short white paper that includes a list of Frequently Asked Questions, the WS-PolicyConstraints specification, and an example of applying WS-PolicyConstraints to the types of Assertions that might be used with WS-Security, developed as a proof-of-concept. I have volunteered to be the discussion list leader, so please send questions about the use of the list to me. We welcome feedback on the concept of a "domain-independent policy assertion language" as well as on the specific WS-PolicyConstraints proposal or other proposals that fit the charter of the proposed TC or on the proposed charter itself. We also need to know if there are sufficient volunteers willing to participate in such a TC and contribute to the development of this language, so if you are interesting in participating, please let us know. I have been receiving various questions off-list that I think others may also be interested in, so I will repost some of those anonymously with my answers. Regards, Anne Anderson -- Anne H. Anderson Email: Anne.Anderson@Sun.COM Sun Microsystems Laboratories 1 Network Drive,UBUR02-311 Tel: 781/442-0928 Burlington, MA 01803-0902 USA Fax: 781/442-1692
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