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Subject: Re: OASIS - Catalog Threat ?
/ "Mary McRae" <mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org> was heard to say: | Hi Lauren, | | This email was sent to communications (Carol Geyer). | | Regards, | | Mary | |> |> -----Original Message----- |> From: Steven J. Hathaway [mailto:shathawa@e-z.net] |> Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 12:28 PM |> To: communications@oasis-open.org |> Subject: OASIS - Catalog Threat ? |> |> I recommend that (Sec: 4.1.1) of the OASIS entity resolver |> catalog specification be revised to help avoid the |> development of products that have misleading identifier trust. |> |> OASIS is a general entity resolver and catalog. It can now |> be used with XML. The specification document (Sec: 4.1.1) |> describing the 'prefer' attribute may harbor a security |> threat related to identifier trust. |> |> Normally, the Public identifiers have global scope, and |> therefore a high probability of trust. The System |> identifiers normally have a restricted scope - that of a |> specific system - and therefore do not have the global trust. |> |> When a document is passed between systems, it is undefined |> what the scope of System identifier implies. Herein lies an |> OASIS catalog threat. A document may have both Public and |> System identifiers proclaiming to be associated with the |> Public resource. Since the document could be received from a |> foreign system, the Public and System identifiers may no |> longer define the same resource. The System identifiers in |> messages received from foreign systems should have a lower |> threshold of trust than Public identifiers. |> |> The 'prefer' attribute is often set to 'public' for a catalog |> or group. And if both a Public and System identifier for the |> resource reside in the catalog, the System replacement text |> is used. Most developers would imply that the Public |> replacement text should be used (See Section 4.1.1. table). |> |> The 'prefer' attribute should be set to 'system' to handle |> those documents that are only generated and consumed by the |> same system. I'm not sure I understand the comment. Users are free to set the prefer attribute to system if they wish. The catalog standard does not specify a default value for the prefer attribute and mandates that tools provide a way for the user to specify it. Be seeing you, norm -- Norman Walsh XML Standards Architect Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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