Re: Requirements Gathering for Liberty ID-WSFToolkit

Bryan,
I'm really glad that Ping Identity is pursuing this, since this is 
exactly what addresses our present need!  I've been in the process of 
constructing a set of WSF services to handle Authentication, Personal 
Profile, and Preferences for all of our disparate (particularly non 
browser based) systems.  I really haven't gotten much beyond roughing 
them out, but there are some aspects that have come to my attention 
during the process, like:

The format and exchange of the Security Token accessible to all client 
types (like those in the Liberty Client Profiles Specification).  In 
our case, it needs to be consumable by a variety of clients (like Java, 
VisualFoxPro, Access, ColdFusion) and will also be used for session 
management.

The schemas being used to define Authentication and Personal Profile 
document messages.  I see where Query, QueryResponse, Modify and 
ModifyResponse are referenced, but their definitions don't appear to be 
in the ID-SIS-PP schema.  It's a similar case for 
RegisterNameIdentifierRequest/Response, FederationTermination, 
LogoutRequest, and the other Authn operation documents.  (Granted, the 
Libety Specs I'm looking at are from October, so I may be missing or 
have missed something.)  If these schemas don't already exist, how will 
these messages be addressed in a standard way?


Regarding the items you mentioned, the following comes to mind:

I can understand your wanting to combine the Discovery, Employee 
Profile and Interaction services rather than always first obtaining and 
passing around the Discovery Service's authentication assertion.  But 
if including the Employee Profile, then it seems to me that it would be 
beneficial to also include the Liberty ID-SIS Personal Profile Service 
in this conglomeration.  However, are two orthogonal issues being 
combined here?  Would it be better to keep Discovery/Interaction 
separate from the Employee/Personal profiles, since the former deals 
with process and the latter with data?

I'd like to propose adding Tomcat to Shawn McKinney's list of 
application containers to be supported.

I'd like to see SOAP Endpoints explicitly provided (and extendable).

I'd like to have ID-WSF and ID-FF efficiently coexist side by side, 
able to use the same repositories and custom processes for 
authentication (without duplication of either).

The "granularity" question is tough to describe.  I'd like complete 
flexibility to keep identity data any way I'd like, but I wouldn't want 
to have to write a class for each data column.  However, writing a 
single class - that conforms to a toolkit interface - for each service 
area (ie: one for authentication, another for personal profile, etc.) 
would be completely reasonable.  Similarly, interfaces defining how to 
obtain Profile data (shielding the developer from processing XPath 
queries directly) would be very welcome.  Even if it had to be one 
interface/subclassed Adapter per Profile subsection - like one each for 
InformalName/CommonName/LegalIdentity, EmploymentIdentity, AddressCard, 
MsgContact, Facade, Demographics, etc.

Any aids provided to facilitate request consumption and response 
generation will be greatly appreciated!

I don't know how much of this is what you were looking for, but this is 
what comes to mind thus far.    As I get into this more, may I send 
additional thoughts on the subject?

If you'd like, please feel free to contact me about any of this.
Sincerely,
-John


John R. Lorenti, MS
Software Architect
Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services
805 East Broad Street; Tenth Floor
Richmond, VA 23219
(804) 640-6066
[email protected]

On Jan 20, 2005, at 11:58 AM, Bryan Field-Elliot wrote:

>  Hello SourceID list members!
>
>  Ping Identity is now developing a Java-based toolkit to aid in the 
> construction of Liberty ID-WSF (Identity Web Services Framework) 
> applications. We are targeting a Q1 release, in beta form. At a 
> minimum, this first version of the Liberty ID-WSF toolkit will have 
> the following characteristics:
>
>  - Java-based
>  - Aid in the construction of requests, transmission of requests, 
> reception of requests, and creation of responses for Liberty ID-WSF 
> messages
>  - Coverage of the Discovery protocol, the Employee Profile Service, 
> and the Interaction Service.
>  - Aid in the construction of applications based upon the DST (Data 
> Services Template)
>  - Aid in the handling of various Liberty Security Mechanisms.
>
>  At this time we'd like to solicit feedback from the list on what 
> other architectural considerations you would like for us have, as we 
> continue to evolve the toolkit.  e.g.:
>
>  - With what kind of environments would you like to be able to easily 
> integrate the toolkit?
>  - How granular would you like the toolkit primitives to be?
>
>  Comments or ideas would be appreciated!
>
>  Thank you,
>
>  Bryan Field-Elliot
>  Ping Identity Corporation
>
>
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