please don't portray xacml to be a SOAP intensive tech. I have heartburn with the words "soap only". We need a standardized wsdl such that the soap side of the world can be happy. But interfaces to the PDP does not have to be SOAP alone. I will take in any transport that can move my xml payload (xacml request/response) from one point to another. SOAP (with saml/xacml payloads), REST (xml over http architecture) and plain xml over http are all possibilities.
XACML is a XML language that defines access control rules. If we want to use json as one of the authoring means, we have to rename it to jacml. ;)
We are just defining various mechanisms to transport the xml (xacml) payload. Whether it is http or soap transport mechanism, that does not take away the primary goal of xacml - to define access control constructs.
My thoughts only.
Regards,
Anil
On 05/24/2011 04:20 PM, David Brossard wrote:
BANLkTi=y81-iGE2a87hOM=kX-hbwqFXGRA@mail.gmail.com" type="cite">Dear all,
To summarize what's been said:
(a) naming the interface "REST" is misleading - let's drop the name.
(b) there is a need for a standard interface (transport / communication) and not just the XACML request/response.
(c) interface standardization could be done in a profile - it's easier than touching the XACML core and it keeps concerns clearly separated.
Today we have the SAML for XACML profile. Moving to a SOAP-only interface would be a great step forward.
Independently of the above, would it be interesting to design / standardize an easy-to-consume interface, something easier than what we have today? Something more in the likes of a GET request with simple GET parameters?
Is there a common place where we could gather requirements and ideas or is this email thread the way to go forward?
I will be a Gluecon 2011 tomorrow and Thursday. I will try to gather requirements from the developer community.
Cheers,
David.
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Anil Saldhana <Anil.Saldhana@redhat.com> wrote:
Craig,
if you want to take the wsdl standardization task, I will support you.
Regards,
Anil
On 05/20/2011 04:55 PM, Craig R Forster wrote:Hi all,
I agree that calling such an API a "REST" API is a misnomer.
>> So what is of interest is merely the HTTP protocol indeed and binding the XACML request / response to GET or POST verbs along with a potential mapping into simple HTTP request parameters or a JSON payload.
If the payload is an XACML request in it's currently-defined XML form, then I don't see any benefit to using HTTP POST rather than SOAP. SOAP has better tooling, and only adds two elements as a wrapper in it's minimal form ( <soap:Envelope> and <soap:Body>). For there to be any benefit I think the payload would have to be JSON, in which case we'd have to define a canonical way to represent XACML requests and responses in JSON form.
Mapping attributes in an XACML request to individual HTTP GET parameters seems cumbersome. I think the better approach is to define an entire request as a JSON object and send that via whatever HTTP verb is most applicable.
However, I think it'd be more prudent to first define a canonical WSDL for an XACML PDP web service. The TC has been reluctant to do this in the past, for whatever reason, and while it doesn't overlap with a JSON over HTTP protocol I think that it's worth standardizing first.
Regards,
Craig
David Brossard ---05/20/2011 10:27:11 AM---Hi, That's true... This might be more about exposing the PDP with the lowest
From:
David Brossard <david.brossard@axiomatics.com>
To:
remon.sinnema@emc.com
Cc:
xacml@lists.oasis-open.org
Date:
05/20/2011 10:27 AM
Subject:
Re: [xacml] PDP REST Interface - proposal
Hi,
That's true... This might be more about exposing the PDP with the lowest possible barrier to entry - making an authorization request as simple as can be.
Since the PDP is stateless by design, a pure REST approach is therefore a mismatch since REST is aimed at providing support for stateful web services.
So what is of interest is merely the HTTP protocol indeed and binding the XACML request / response to GET or POST verbs along with a potential mapping into simple HTTP request parameters or a JSON payload.
Cheers,
David.
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 5:04 PM, <remon.sinnema@emc.com> wrote:David,
From: David Brossard [mailto:david.brossard@axiomatics.com]
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 4:20 PM
To: xacml
Subject: [xacml] PDP REST Interface - proposal
>> Following the call yesterday, I would like to kick start some discussions around the possibility around designing a standard REST interface for a PDP. The idea would be to have a PEP-PDP interaction using REST. <<
I don't see any "resources" in your proposal. So I guess you're just talking about an HTTP interface, not REST.
>> 2 possible methods: GET and POST
* GET
o Input: Send in a URL e.g. http://foo.bar/AuthZ/?a=value&b=value2&c=value3
o Output: the decision (the whole XACML decision? simply the decision string e.g. "Permit"? an HTTP status code?)
o Pros: extremely easy to consume
o Cons: the request sent / response received are not valid XACML requests / responses.
* This means a layer on the PDP side (in the REST wrapping) needs to map from a HTTP GET parameter to a XACML attribute
* In addition, if the response is merely a status code or a String, it breaks the XACML standard in the sense that obligations / advice would be lost <<
I guess you could model Decisions as HTTP status codes:
Permit - 200 OK
Deny - 403 Forbidden
NotApplicable - 404 Not Found
Indeterminate - 500 Internal Server Error
The obligations/ advice could then be in the response body.
As for the mapping from HTTP parameters to XACML attributes, I don't think this is a big deal. I'm assuming most implementations don't use the XML format of the spec internally, so there has to be some sort of mapping anyway. This new mapping seems like a fairly easy addition.
>> * POST
o Input: the entire XACML request in its XML form
o Output: the entire XACML response in its XML form
o Pros: complies with the XACML standard
o Cons: what is the benefit other than performance? It doesn't make adoption easier <<
Since an authorization request is idempotent, I would propose PUT instead.
>> * POST using JSON
o Input: the JSON representation of a XACML request
o Output: the JSON representation of a XACML response
o Pros: all the richness of XACML. The format is JSON which developers seems to prefer.
o Cons: perhaps a bit too cumbersome. <<
A lot of web services these days support both XML and JSON. The former is better for consumption by server code, while the latter is easier to consume by a JavaScript client.
>> What are your thoughts? <<
Sounds interesting. Do you have any (potential) customers that expressed interest in this? What are the use cases you are trying to solve with this proposal that you can't with the current spec?
>> Do you think any standardization effort / profile definition effort should be driven by a developer community willing to use authorization and which would want to sacrifice the richness of XACML for the sake of simplicity? <<
You won't lose any richness in the PUT variant. I'm not sure about GET either, that depends on the mapping of XACML attributes to HTTP parameters.
Thanks,
Ray
