Re: [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document

[Kelvin Lawrence <klawrenc@us.ibm.com>]

Hi everyone.  Given that the discussion
of the charter change text etc. seems to still be quite active here on
the list I have not yet asked Mary to start the ballot.  I had originally
planned to send the note to Mary asking her to start the ballot yesterday
(Thursday). However, there has been a lot more discussion on this topic
than I had expected based on our TC call last week. Therefore, unless anyone
strongly objects, I propose that we try and close on this once and for
all at the TC call this coming week and that right after that call, the
chairs will take whatever action the TC wants to take.

I wish everyone a pleasant weekend and
look forward to talking to you all on our call next week (July 11th)

Cheers
Kelvin

Frederick Hirsch <frederick.hirsch@nokia.com>

07/06/2007 12:48 PM

To	ext Hal Lockhart <hlockhar@bea.com>
cc	Frederick Hirsch <frederick.hirsch@nokia.com>, "Rich Levinson" <rich.levinson@oracle.com>, Anthony Nadalin/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, "Raepple, Martin" <martin.raepple@sap.com>, "Prateek Mishra" <prateek.mishra@oracle.com>, <ws-sx@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	Re: [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document

+1 to proposal and logic.

regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch
Nokia


On Jun 26, 2007, at 9:17 PM, ext Hal Lockhart wrote:

> First I must say that I disagree with Tony about the source of the
 
> complexity here. While WS-Security (and friends) is complex, IMO  
> most of the complexity comes from the semantics of actually  
> insuring the intended security properties of a given message or  
> message exchange. Actually creating messages with well formed  
> signatures and so forth is relatively straightforward, especially
 
> if one is familiar with other security protocols, such as Kerberos
 
> and TLS.
>
>
>
> However, I believe that WS-SecurityPolicy adds an order of  
> magnitude of complexity in understanding all the various assertion
 
> types, how they interact, where they can be attached and what  
> messages correspond to given policy combinations. That is evening
 
> ignoring additional issues such as matching. I think that if we  
> expect WS-SP to be widely used, we need examples – lots of them.
I  
> believe the examples in the current document are something like a
 
> bare minimum for people to really understand how WS-SP works.
>
>
>
> That said, I agree with Tony that we need direct testing of the  
> examples in the document. As Rich says, the key thing is not can we
 
> process each other’s messages, but do the messages produced  
> correspond to the policies. That is what we should be testing. But
 
> unlike Rich, I don’t think this is a completely manual process. In
 
> fact if we specify enough, it may be possible to get the messages
 
> to exactly match a specified pattern. In any event I think we  
> should try.
>
>
>
> So in the interest of being specific, I propose we do the following.
>
>
>
> 1. Continue to report and fix problems in the examples doc based on
 
> inspection or individual testing
>
> 2. When there are no open issues, vote the document to CD
>
> 3. Conduct a Public Review
>
> 4. At the same time or afterwards, test each of the examples in  
> some kind of virtual interop
>
> 5. Drop any examples we cannot get sufficient testing of.
>
> 6. Vote the document to Committee Spec.
>
>
>
> I guess I have to concede that this requires a charter change, but
 
> I believe it is worth doing if we really want people to be able to
 
> use WS-SP.
>
>
>
> I would be interested to hear specific proposals from other people.
>
>
>
> Hal
>
>
>
> From: Rich Levinson [mailto:rich.levinson@oracle.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 9:39 AM
> To: Anthony Nadalin
> Cc: Raepple, Martin; Prateek Mishra; ws-sx@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document
>
>
>
> I have thought about the "testing" of the examples in the
WS-SX  
> Examples
> document, especially since actually re-running the old WS-Security
 
> Interop
> and other Interop scenarios is likely to be prohibitively expensive
 
> in terms
> of required resources.
>
> The way I see it is that the messages in the WS-SX Examples document
> have already been tested since by and large they are simply copies
of
> the messages from the old Interop documents.
>
> What is new here is the matching of the WS-SP policies against those
> messages, which to a large degree is an exercise in manually examining
> the WS-SP Policy vs the message contents, which is what is done in
> the text portions of each example.
>
> Therefore, imo, "testing" of these examples really is reviewing
the  
> Policies
> themselves for accuracy and then reviewing the text describing the
 
> relation
> between the Policies and the covered message.
>
> Of course, the accuracy of the xml for the Policies is important as
 
> well,
> and this is where the current test results appear to be focused.  
> However,
> I think having the total focus on the XML parsing of the Policies,
 
> while
> important, is not really addressing the real intent of the document.
>
> The value of the document, imo, is showing people how to "do
WS-SP"
> for use cases that are likely to already to exist and need to be  
> incorporated
> to these emerging standards for advertising those services.
>
>     Thanks,
>     Rich
>
> Anthony Nadalin wrote:
>
> What I see is a document that has not been tested or validated for
 
> correctness, I would rather have correctness then more explanation
 
> on something that is potentially wrong.Members have also invested
 
> time in trying to test this document. I can't imagine writing this
 
> document w/o the ability to test it.
>
> Anthony Nadalin | Work 512.838.0085 | Cell 512.289.4122
> <image001.gif>
> " border="0">"Raepple, Martin" <martin.raepple@sap.com>
>
>
> "Raepple, Martin"<martin.raepple@sap.com>
>
> 06/13/2007 06:35 AM
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> Anthony Nadalin/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, "Prateek  
> Mishra"<prateek.mishra@oracle.com>
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> Subject
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> RE: [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document
>
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>
> Most of the examples are actually based on interop documents (e.g.
 
> from WS-I, WSS TC, WCF Plugfests). If not already implicitly or  
> explicitly included, I don't see any reason why we should not also
 
> add certain scenarios from the interop document.
>
> The issue I see with taking forward the interop document is that  
> there is only very limited explanation given on the scenarios and
 
> most of them don't include the corresponding policy at all. The TC
 
> asked for adding these detailled explanations to the SP examples  
> document, along with message samples, in a call earlier this year.
 
> Members invested their time in updating the document accordingly  
> and reviewing it. Therefore, I think the example document should be
 
> considered as the base document for taking forward, not the interop
 
> documents.
>
> - Martin
>
> From: Anthony Nadalin [mailto:drsecure@us.ibm.com]
> Sent: Mittwoch, 13. Juni 2007 05:00
> To: Prateek Mishra
> Cc: ws-sx@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document
>
> Comments:
>
> 1) I would not call WS-SecurityPolicy complex, I would call WS- 
> Security, WS-Trust and other specifications that actually define  
> protocols complex. WS-SecurityPolicy merely defines URIs that  
> expresses specific wire format for WS-Trust, WS-Security and WS- 
> SecureConversation. We actually have examples already, these are in
 
> the interop document, these are real examples that work and have  
> been validated. We have major concern over what is in the examples
 
> document as to not being validated and examples that can actually
 
> achieve interop.
>
> I don't see any mention of a examples document in the charter as an
 
> output document, It seems it was important to change the charter to
 
> include the WS-Policy 1.5, I would think that it would also be as
 
> important to make sure the charter actually reflects the TC work.
>
> So I don't think that the question on in scope is ill-posed at all.
 
> As we have published WS-Security, WS-Trust and WS- 
> SecureConversation w/o a examples document, seems lost of TC do  
> this, ones that actually produce examples documents actually test
 
> the samples.
>
> 2) I don't believe that the document has been reviewed extensively
 
> or we would not have found the issues we have found so far, once  
> again this document has not been validated or tested for actual  
> correctness or interop. As people that read a formal document  
> produced by at TC expect the document to be correct and tested.
>
> 3) Disagree, I think that this document needs to be validated and
 
> that we can actually use and interop on the examples.
>
> I find the request to take this document to CD status as we don't
 
> even take our interop documents to CD status and these are  
> documents that have been validated for correctness and  
> interoperability, seems like these are the documents that we should
 
> be taking forward.
>
>
> Anthony Nadalin | Work 512.838.0085 | Cell 512.289.4122
> <image001.gif>
> Prateek Mishra <prateek.mishra@oracle.com>
>
> Prateek Mishra<prateek.mishra@oracle.com>
>
> 06/08/2007 05:21 PM
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> ws-sx@lists.oasis-open.org
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> Subject
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> [ws-sx] Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document
>
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>
> This message responds to the following questions from the May 30
> conference call minutes:
>
> [quote]
>  1. Is an examples document in scope of the TC?
>
>  2. What specific examples are or are not in scope in an examples
> document?
>
>   3. What additional work or steps are required before the examples
> doc can progress to CD?
>
> [\quote]
>
> 1. The starting point of the examples document goes back to May  
> 2006 when
> this work was proposed by Ashok Malhotra[1]. The points made then
were
> that the
> SecurityPolicy specification is quite complext (111 pages in its final
> incarnation)
> and that most people would have a difficult time figuring out even
> simple example policies.
> The idea was to collect examples with explanations, this would provide
> readers a
> starting point for many scenarios of interest.
>
> I think the question of whether such a document is "in scope"
is
> actually ill-posed.
>
> A more appropriate question would be: is it appropriate to publish
a
> complex standard like
> SecurityPolicy without an examples document?
>
> The examples are needed as a kind of sanity-test so that we can see
 
> how
> SecurityPolicy
> features may be used to secure message exchanges in a few cases of
> interest to the TC.
> Aside from the educational and labor-saving aspects, it is also a
> indication of openness in that
> readers need not purchase proprietary products in order to understand
> the use of
> the SecurityPolicy specification.
>
> Finally, if we look at comparable specifications like
> W3C XML Schema we find them accompanied by a systematic and detailed
> primer document.
>
>
> 2. The examples document has been quite extensively reviewed by  
> many TC
> members
> and many suggestions for change have been made and implemented.
>
> If any vendor has a specific concern with a particular example, they
> should explain what this is
> and I am sure the Editors would update the document appropriately.
>
>
> 3. I believe that as soon as any remaining open issues are  
> resolved, we
> should conduct a
> CD vote for the document.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> [1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ws-sx/200604/msg00031.html
>
>
>