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Subject: RE: [ebxml-msg] Intermediary I-cloud "requirements" draft
Thanks Dale for the effort to tackle the “Goals”
topic which was not addressed very extensively. My comments are inine… From: Moberg Dale
[mailto:dmoberg@axway.com] Here
are some of the goals (not axioms!) that we have been discussing for building
various I-clouds. It is too early for axioms IMO. [Hamid]: I don’t know if you are joking with your comment
(not axioms!) or you are serious. If you are joking, I need not comment on
this. If you are serious, I may need to clarify what I meant by axioms: When I was
talking to Sander, I used the term axiom in a “joke” way (not a
serious talk). The meaning of my joke was that the design principles should be
considered as axioms (meaning that they are extremely important holy law that
can never be broken or violated). Indeed, the axioms come after the goals have
been specified. Once we know the goals, we write down the axioms (the design
principles) that any solution must conform to in order to be an acceptable and
a very good solution to standardize. I thought the goals were already
specified, otherwise why would we be discussing Sander’s solution on the
conf call? If the goals are not yet defined, then Sander should not even
propose a solution. In any case, I am very glad that we are starting to tackle
the “goals” topic, and I wish I can get more and more information
on this topic so that the solution we will propose would be the best. Thank you
for providing such an information, but I still have some questions about it as
my comments below will show you… Routing a. intermediary
cloud can remap an original sender’s message types to a new recipient
without the original sender changing its configuration [Hamid]: First of all, I
will be very grateful that you define terminology very precisely before any
talk. I never heard the term I-Cloud (or intermediary cloud), and it should be
defined before you propose the goals. This is not just for this term, but any
terms you will be using in the list of goals need to be defined with great
precision and on the front. I will assume here that you mean a chain of
Intermediaries (or a network of intermediaries) unless I am mistaken. Second, I am not sure I really
understand your sentence (and forgive my stupidity). What do you mean by “remap”
and what do you mean by “type”? Remap a message type: does that
mean changing the type of a message to another type? (an Intermediary receives
an “Ack” type of message, and it changes that message to something
else like an ebms3 user message piggy-backed with the Ack or maybe to another type
of message? What do you mean “to
a new recipient”? The original sender is sending for example a user
message with a To-Party equals to “sun.com”, and your I-Cloud is
giving the message to a receiver that might not even be the party with the name
“sun.com”? b. intermediary
should strive to maintain transparency by not modifying message excessively [Hamid]: I am against
any modification of the message being passing through the Intermediaries. “Not
excessively” is a very vague word (and very dangerous to use). It does
not give a measure of what kind of modifications are allowed. My position on
this is very clear: I don’t allow any Intermediary to modify the message. Transparency
aspects a. original
signatures remain unbroken (and probably need to be designed to withstand some
I-cloud modifications) [Hamid]: Sometimes,
there is a huge difference between theory and practice. In theory, we can
elegantly state that signatures should be designed to not be broken easily. In
practice, it is extremely difficult for a SOAP node to know whether the
modification it wants to do may or may not break existing signatures. The
position on this should be very clear by simply not allowing modifications of
the message except the headers that are only intended for the Intermediaries.
Your sentence I-cloud modifications smells lots of trouble and it scares me a
lot. There is only one type of modification (not modifications): the
Intermediary may remove the header that is intended for the Intermediaries only.
Only the last Intermediary may remove such a header. b. reliability
assurances are preserved to the extent possible – end to end if possible [Hamid]: There is no
problem with this goal. We were aware of this, and it was taken care of in our
solution. c. data
confidentiality is preserved (and may also need to be designed/constrained to
enable I-cloud presence) [Hamid]: I agree with data
confidentiality, but I don’t agree that as a sender, I should constrain
my confidentiality just because my message will go through intermediaries as
opposed to peer-to-peer. The design of Intermediaries architecture should take
into consideration that a sender is free to encrypt everything (except the
headers that are intended for Intermediaries only). Endpoints
a. Core
conformance endpoints (original sender and ultimate receiver) should not need
to modify behavior [at all | excessively]. The sender and receiver
are not modifying their behavior at all (this was implicit in axiom 5 J) b. MSH
intermediaries will have special conformance profile [Hamid]: Totally agree
on this: an “Intermediary” is a separate role by itself, and it obviously
deserves a conformance profile. SOAP
intermediary a. A
MSH intermediary is also a SOAP intermediary, but may be constrained in certain
ways by SOAP (probably underconstrained by SOAP Intermediary rules) [Hamid]: Intermediary
rules only cover the nature of the processing itself: that is what are the
actions an Intermediary should do as part of the “header processing”.
This is outside the SOAP spec. b. A
MSH SOAP intermediary can be targeted by headers and those headers removed. [Hamid]: Yes that is the
case. The last intermediary is the one who can remove those headers. c. Addition
of headers must be carefully scrutinized with respect to Transparency aspects. [Hamid]: What type of
addition of headers you are talking about? Do you mean an Intermediary may add
headers that are not even intended for Intermediaries but rather intended for
an MSH or a Reliability module for example (like sending a create sequence as
Sander’s diagram is illustrating)? The answer is no. Intermediaries are
not allowed to add headers that are not intended for them. There will be no
transparency if the message can be modified in weird ways. |
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