AS4 Agreement Update used by ENTSOG AS4 (FYI only)

[Pim van der Eijk <pvde@sonnenglanz.net>]

The following is posted FYI, as it may be of interest for TC members 
looking to provide AS4 solutions to the energy market in Europe. ENTSOG 
has published a guidance document for use of ebCore Agreement Update 
with its AS4 profile:

http://www.entsog.eu/public/uploads/files/publications/INT%20Network%20Code/2016/INT1049-170109_ENTSOG%20AS4%20Agreements%20and%20Agreement%20Updates_Rev_1.pdf

The current version Rev_3 of the ENTSOG AS4 profile [AS4TSO] introduces 
the concept of agreements and agreement updates to the ENTSOG AS4 
profile. The agreement concept is an established ebXML concept for 
(versions of) messaging technical configurations that is applied to AS4 
[AS4]. In ENTSOG AS4, it is used for certificate updates.  Agreement 
Update, a generalisation of peer-to-peer online certificate exchange, is 
standardised at OASIS in the separate ebCore Agreement Update 
specification [AU]. Together, agreements and agreement updates enable a 
flexible mechanism for exchanging certificates and for managing and 
updating security configurations for signing and encryption of ENTSOG 
AS4 messages.

As AS4 implementations for use with the ENTSOG profile will be required 
to support these new features from 1 July 2017, this document explains 
some of the consequences of the use of these concepts with AS4 and the 
impact and requirements on AS4 implementations and their deployments, in 
order to allow solution providers to determine if their products need 
any enhancements or adjustments to support this features and to make any 
adjustments in time for use by their users.

The audience for this document are providers of solutions supporting the 
AS4 Usage Profile for TSO [AS4TSO] and implementers of those solutions 
within the gas industry. This document is informative only. It is only 
intended to help implementers, but does not replace or overrule the 
functionality specified in the ENTSOG AS4 profile and the underlying AS4 
and ebCore Agreement Update specifications. This document complements 
the “Setting Up and AS4 System” document [AS4SETUP].