Hi Hal,
I appreciate what you are saying about the work that has been done,
and, in particular, the admin and WS-XACML stuff needs to be moved
along rapidly. However, I am concerned after briefly looking over the
changes
to XACML core, that while I can see the motivation for removing the
Subject, Resource, Action, and Environment and replacing them with
a generic Attribute, I question the trade-off here between what is a
real
customer need and what is being done just to "clean-up" the protocol vs
the price we will pay for disrupting the interoperability. i.e. if the
same
functionality is actually available in 2.0, albeit in a less clean
manner, I am
concerned that the price of "clean-up" is to risk all kinds of negative
press about how "unstable" the protocol appears to be. I'd be curious
what some of the Burton people would have to say about this.
It seems to me, although I haven't gotten to all the details yet, that
a lot
of what you say is valuable about admin and WS-XACML could be
had building as profiles and adjuncts to 2.0. Is there a reason why
these
core changes are tied to those items?
Thanks,
Rich
Hal Lockhart wrote:
2E22E42D2E71B845B67F093A02B962DBF4459E@repbex01.amer.bea.com"
type="cite">
During the last call I asked people to identify the issues or new
features we intend to complete for version 3.0. I agree than many of
your suggestions would be quite valuable additions to the next version
of XACML.
On the other, I don't think XACML 3.0 should be arbitrarily held up just
because people are beginning to implement 2.0. A lot of time and effort
has been put into Admin policies for example and that functionality is
frequently requested. Also I expect some of the 3.0 work, such as the
SAML Profile, WS-XACML profile and the Provisioning Protocol will be
useful in conjunction with XACML 2.0.
I think the PR aspect of this can be dealt with by careful handling. For
one thing it will be legal to support only "3.0 without Admin policies".
This should be an easy step for current 2.0 implementations.
We should discuss this on the call.
Hal
-----Original Message-----
From: Prateek Mishra [mailto:prateek.mishra@oracle.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 1:25 PM
To: Erik Rissanen
Cc: XACML TC
Subject: Re: [xacml] Moving ahead with 3.0
Colleagues,
I would like to voice my concern about this movement towards a 3.0
release. Creating a new version of a standard is a major step and it
could easily create confusion in the marketplace and even hinder
ongoing
XACML 2.0 implementation.
Its not clear to me why we need this release and to what extent it is
based on needs of the industry. Is there adequate implementation,
deployment and understanding of XACML 2.0 in the industry and the
community?
Working collaboratively, the TC managed to pull off a major milestone
in
XACML 2.0's development - the interop at Catalyst 2007. The interop
document and discussions around it have generated a wealth of open
issues and concerns that need to be answered if XACML is to mature and
receive substantial implementation. I am deeply concerned that so far
we
havent addressed almost any of these issues and concerns.
I have separately published a list of issues relevant to enterprises
based on a presentation I gave at RSA2007. This presentation was
warmly
received and many industry professionals remarked to me that gaps of
the
type I captured were of interest to them.
We would be happy to invest effort in capturing all of these issues.
Rich Levinson and I will commit to publishing a draft in the next
month. I hope we will be able to engage around these issues within the
TC and respond to these requirements that have been derived from real
deployments and scenarios.
Thanks,
prateek mishra
All,
I would like to finish XACML 3.0. :-)
So, what do we still have to do?
There is the issues list of course. More on that below. I need to
update the docs to the new OASIS templates as well. But besides
that,
what more is there to do?
The delegation draft lacks a conformance section. I can make one.
The
core has one already since the doc is really just an updated 2.0
doc.
Have there been any changes to the requirements on the conformance
requirements section from the side of OASIS?
It might be a good idea if someone who is a native English speaker
proofreads the docs, but we can wait with that until the end.
The profiles also need to be updated, but I suspect that it is
mostly
just updating to the new schema.
Below you can find the the issues list with some proposals. Could we
discuss the issues at the next meeting? I also propose that we move
any post 3.0 issues to a separate wiki page so we can focus on
wrapping up 3.0.
Issue 12, more general conclusions: Bill and I posted a working
draft
about generalized obligations. We have not received much feedback on
this. I propose that we defer this to post 3.0.
Related to this is the issue about the timing attribute for
obligations which was proposed by David Chadwick. I put this as a
feature in the obligation draft. If we defer the obligation draft,
do
we want to include the timing attribute in the 3.0 core? In my
opinion
this depends on what we expect will happen with the obligation work.
My preference is that we after 3.0 core is done quickly complete the
obligation work, in which case the timing should go there, not in
the
core now. But if the obligation profile will never happen, then we
should include the timing attribute in the core now.
Issue 23, access permitted: This is waiting for Hal to update the
proposal to the new core schema. Also, there are concerns about how
this could affect the complexity of evaluation. Hal, what is you
take
on this?
Issue 36, PDP metadata: I suggest that we wait with this issue until
last in the 3.0 work and see what meta date we need.
Issue 62, policy provisioning interface. I think this is post 3.0.
It
doesn't affect the core directly and this work is very early yet.
Issue 63 is just waiting for me to update the docs. Will do soon. :)
Issue 66, missing attributes may be underspecified. I propose that
we
defer this to post 3.0. It is early work and might be better suited
for a profile for a PDP <-> PEP protocol.
Issue 67, XPath 2.0. There is a proposal in the docs, but someone
who
knows xpath better than me needs to review it. If no one wants to
review it, I propose that we go with as it is and make errata later
if
needed. :-)
Issue 71, different categories as different entities: I propose that
we defer this post 3.0. It is a major change from XACML 2.0 and
there
is no concrete proposal. I am also concerned with computational
complexity since this is related to the complexity issue we got with
distinct indirect delegates.
Issue 72, placement of supplied policies is open needs to be done
for
3.0. I will think up a proposal.
Issue 73, start of administrative requests in nested policy sets. I
think we don't need to change anything as things are now, but I will
think more about it. I will write an explanation of whatever result
I
reach.
Issue 75, PEP <-> PDP interface. Defer this to a post 3.0 profile.
Issue 76, multiple conditions. I'm not sure about this one. Seems
like
partly a duplicate of issue 71. I also wonder whether it is not
possible to implement the xpath part of this issue using clever
xpaths
and bag functions in the policy.
Issues 82, 83 and 85 seem straightforward to fix.
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