Re: [provision] RE: Account-specific operations (was"Basic Operations...")

[Gary P Cole <Gary.P.Cole@Sun.COM>]

We've talked about having a standard schema, and that seems workable to me.
If I understand you correctly, there'd be a schema for Account (as a
subclass of ProvisionedObject) that would include the 'password' attribute.

Perhaps it would be helpful for you to post a straw-man of a standard
schema. I took a crack at this with PrOM, but I'd like to see what you have
in mind.  Examining something a little more concrete would help me (and
perhaps others as well).

Gary
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Bohren" <jbohren@opennetwork.com>
To: <provision@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 8:49 AM
Subject: RE: [provision] RE: Account-specific operations (was "Basic
Operations...")



All password related information  (the password, password reset status,
etc.) has to be optionally set on the provision provisioning request.
All the password related information, except the password itself, needs
to be readable as well.

By adding password operations we would essentially create a protocol by
which some information can be set using the standard CRUD operations,
but must be modified and read using an entirely different set of
password specific operations. That makes the protocol more complex and
harder to understand.

I have heard several people express the opinion that having an operation
called "set password" is somehow more intuitive and easier to understand
than using existing operations to set a password attribute. There is no
evidence of that and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. LDAP is
the single most successful identity management protocol in use today,
and it uses setting a password attribute.

It seems to me we should emulate proven success where possible. If there
is a way that is simpler and clearer I'm all for it, but so far I have
not seen any arguments to that effect.

Jeff Bohren
Product Architect
OpenNetwork Technologies, Inc

Try the industry's only 100% .NET-enabled identity management software.
Download your free copy of Universal IdP Standard Edition today. Go to
www.opennetwork.com/eval.



-----Original Message-----
From: Cohen, Doron [mailto:Doron_Cohen@bmc.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 4:06 AM
To: provision@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [provision] RE: Account-specific operations (was "Basic
Operations...")



I agree that on one hand we do not want to limit ourselves to just
account provisioning but that does not require in my view the exclusion
of password management operations . That obviously require the schema to
allow the client to be able to know what operations are allowed for each
type of a PSO/PSTD and obviously relate to it. In fact there are some
cases when even CRUD operations can not be complete . For example, some
target would not allow a delete operation to take place but we still
like to have delete as a core operation.

Enriching the model we have with native operations that provide the SPML
implementer a easy to understand view of the "world of provisioning"
would not necessarily make the standard more complex , in fact it may
simplify the implementation by providing a more straight forward view of
the domain.

Doron

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Bohren [mailto:jbohren@opennetwork.com]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 10:41 PM
To: provision@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [provision] RE: Account-specific operations (was "Basic
Operations...")



Even if you assume (which I don't) that only accounts are provisioned,
there still needs to be a way to determine what kind of accounts support
what kind of operations. For instance Solaris accounts don't support
suspend/restore semantics. Also the difference between set and reset
password is not universal among system that use passwords.

Another interesting case would be provisioning accounts for which
passwords are meaningless altogether. For instance if an RA was making a
provisioning request to a PSP to create accounts strictly for the use
SAML, WS-Federation, or Liberty SSO, that account may never have a
password. In this case suspend/restore makes sense, but the password
operations don't.

Or you may be provisioning end user accounts for use by a web service
enforcement agent. The agent may authorize calls made on the part of an
end user by an authenticated client, where the client never actually
authenticated directly to the agent and does not have a password on that
system.

While I would agree that most provisioning operations on a given service
would concern accounts, that does not mean that other kinds of objects
can be given secondary status. That would severely limit the usefulness
of the spec for no benefit.

I would assume the following:
1) Not all PSOs are accounts
2) Not all PSOs that are accounts can be suspended
3) Not all PSOs that are accounts have passwords
4) Not all PSOs that are accounts and have passwords have password
expirations

Given those assumptions, I don't see any gain in including
suspend/restore and password semantics in the core SPML protocol. It
would only make thing more complicated than they currently are.

Jeff Bohren
Product Architect
OpenNetwork Technologies, Inc

Try the industry's only 100% .NET-enabled identity management software.
Download your free copy of Universal IdP Standard Edition today. Go to
www.opennetwork.com/eval.



-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Cole [mailto:Gary.P.Cole@Sun.COM]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 2:54 PM
To: Jeff Bohren
Cc: provision@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Account-specific operations (was "Basic Operations...")


I've been thinking about this a lot lately (of course, this doesn't mean
that I'm right, just that I'm trying), and I believe that provisioning
is *and should be* account-centric.

The organizations, groups, roles, and rights defined by a target are
relatively static.  The vast majority of the time, we are creating
accounts. These may *refer* to (or belong to) organizational units,
groups, and roles, but they don't always *need* to.

I would assert that with respect to provisioning:
1) *accounts* are primary
2) account *memberships* in containers are secondary
3) *container* objects themselves are tertiary.

I really hope we can find a way to agree, because I think this is
important. We (all the PSTC members) have talked at cross-purposes
occasionally, since each of us come from different points-of-view.

We had a little bit of a breakthrough when we distinguished "white-box"
from "black-box" PSPs.

I'm hoping that the distinction between "internal" and "external"
provisioning may do something like that again.  External provisioning is
the simple case, in which services are well-defined and very few choices
are exposed.  In such a case, you don't see the other enterprise's org
tree, and you may not want to make your operations schema-dependendent.
However, you still need to be able to enable/disable the identity and
set/reset/expire passwords.

Taking a different tack, let's look at it terms of necessity and
sufficiency.  I think we'd all agree that it's *necessary* for a PSP to
create accounts. Some might even argue that creating, deleting and
modifying accounts is *sufficient* for a PSP. It is NOT necessary for a
PSP to create organizational units, although this is desirable.

If we can agree that it's okay for provisioning to be account-centric, I
think we'll be money ahead.  This will make the protocol easier to
understand, easier to adopt, and better adapted to the basic use cases.

Gary
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeff Bohren <jbohren@opennetwork.com>
Date: Monday, May 3, 2004 1:31 pm
Subject: RE: [provision] Basic operations (that should be explicit)

>
> On the enable/disable and password operations I still have the same
> concerns as before. Specifically how does a client know for which PSOs

> those operations make sense. For instance our SPML service can be used

> to provision user accounts as well as organizations units and other
> object types. Obviously reset password does not make sense for
> oraganizational units.
>
> Since it is too limiting to only support account provisioning in SPML,

> it does not make sense to me to include account specific operations in
> the protocol.
>
> Jeff Bohren
> Product Architect
> OpenNetwork Technologies, Inc
>
> Try the industry's only 100% .NET-enabled identity management
> software.Download your free copy of Universal IdP Standard Edition
> today. Go to www.opennetwork.com/eval.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Cole [Gary.P.Cole@Sun.COM]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 2:06 PM
> To: provision@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [provision] Basic operations (that should be explicit)
>
>
> I believe that certain basic operations should be explicit in the SPML

> protocol.  For one thing, this helps the protocol reflect the
> provisioning domain. For another, it reduces dependence on schema.
>
> The most basic operations are CRUD:
> - Create
> - Rename
> - Update
> - Delete
>
> We already have Add, Modify, and Delete, but I think that we should
> call out Rename explicitly.  Renaming  has significant implications
> for the namespace and for references.
>
> I think we should also have:
> - Enable
> - Disable
> - SetPassword
> - ResetPassword
> - ExpirePassword
>
> I realize that one could almost perform an equivalent update by: 1)
> looking up the schema; and 2) finding the appropriate element or
> attribute; and 3) specifying an appropriate value.  However, that
> methodwill differ for each PSP or target.  Basic operations should be
> simple, and should not require schema knowledge.
>
> What say you, grand mavens of provisioning?
>
> Gary
>
>
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>
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