New Functionx for XACML 3.0

[Craig Forster <cforster@au1.ibm.com>]

I'd like to propose a number of new functions for the 3.0 release of XACML.
The new functions in the current 3.0 draft are predominantly conversion
functions, such as "boolean-to-string".

I think we should take the opportunity to add some string manipulation
functions that have simple mappings to underlying functions in common
programming languages.  For example, "string-starts-with" and
"string-ends-with".  At the moment this functionality can be only
implemented using regular expressions, which is computationally expensive,
or non-standard functions such as those available in BEA's WebLogic Server
(http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs92/secwlres/xacmlref.html#wp1097027).

As a starting point, I'd like to propose the following functions:
 - <type>-starts-with
 - <type>-ends-with
 - <type>-contains
 - <type>-substring
 - string-equal-ignore-case

Where <type> is either string or anyURI.

Regards,
Craig

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Craig Forster
Software Engineer
Australia Development Lab - Tivoli Gold Coast
(O) +61 07 5552 4051
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