Comment on wss-swa-profile 1.0 draft .8

["Dana Kaufman" <dkaufman@forumsys.com>]

Here is some feedback based on draft .8:

It is not clear as to how to interpret/transform the encrypted contents
of the attachment.  There are three incompatible possibilities that
different implementers might conclude from the specification:

1) Possibly the encoding of the encrypted data is inferred from the
Content-Transfer-Encoding, i.e. binary means raw bytes and base64 means
base64 encoded bytes.

2) The encoding of the encrypted data is inferred from the SwA transform
specified in the specification.  The specification does not seem to
indicate that the SwA transform does base64 decoding, but the example
implies that it does.

3) The encoding is explicitly specified though transforms in the
CipherReference, as is the norm in XML Encryption.  base64 decoding
would be done with an explicit transform following the SwA transform.

Look like the approach to use needs to be clarified.

Dana S. Kaufman
VP of Product Management
Forum Systems, Inc.
Tel: (781) 788-4232
E-Mail: dkaufman@forumsys.com
Visit http://www.forumsys.com