CEM for AS4

[Timothy Bennett <timothy@drummondgroup.com>]

Let me preface this by clearly stating that this is *not* a proposal for a new feature to be added to AS4 at the 11th hour.  But, it is a survey of opinion and thoughts...

I got an email (and Jacques was CC'd on it) from Wim de Olde, who is the Secretary of the EASEE-gas Technology Standards Working Group (www.easee-gas.org).  They have introduced AS2 into the European energy exchange market in the past and find that CEM (Certificate Exchange Messages) to be required for large-scale deployments with 100s of trading partners.

Wim's group apparently is tracking the development of AS4 with considerable interest, and he didn't think that AS4 is requiring CEM or any kind of CEM-like functionality -- which he is correct about.  His opinion is that AS4 should require this kind of functionality.

So, my questions to the group are:

1. What is your opinion on AS4 requiring some kind of certificate exchange?
2. I'm guessing there might be one or more Web services standards that define and specify something similar to CEM.  Is there?  What are those standard(s)? What status do those standards have with respect to maturity and uptake in the WS community?
3. What kind of effort would it be for this group to add support for this functionality to the profile given #2 above assuming there is consensus around #1?
4. What kind of implementation effort are we talking about for AS4 product developers?

Timothy