Re: [xacml] type for SubjectCategory

[Seth Proctor <Seth.Proctor@Sun.COM>]

On Tue, 2003-06-24 at 11:30, Anne Anderson wrote:
> I believe it was not the intention of the XACML TC to change the
> type of SubjectCategory from xs:string to xs:anyURI, and that
> this change was made by mistake.

Going back through the mail archives I can't find any evidence of how
this change happened, except that when the proposal for making category
an XML attribute was given, it specified the category as an anyURI.

> I propose that this change be considered an erratum against XACML
> 1.0, and that the schema be changed back to make the type for
> SubjectCategory be xs:string for XACML 1.1.

I assume this would involve changing both the policy and context schemas
to specify that the category is a string in both the Request and the
Designator. Right?

Is there any reason to make that change rather than just changing the
string-equality line to specify anyURI-equality? I only ask because this
is a somewhat significant change in that it makes all 1.0 policies that
use categories invalid. Most of the other 1.1 features being proposed
are additions that are also backward compatable. I don't see any problem
in using URIs for the category, and since it's what people are already
using, why change it?


seth