Glossary for the OASIS WebService Interactive Applications (WSIA)

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Jeffrey C. Broberg

Rev	Date	By Whom	What
00	15 Jan 2002	jbroberg	Initial document from other OASIS TC
00	29 Jan 2002	jbroberg	Removed invalid references, editorial comments
00	01 Feb 2002	jbroberg	Added entries from dgisolfi
01	15 Feb 2002	jbroberg	Moved to color coding for TC activities, and change to the Notation semantics

Glossary for the OASIS WebService Interactive Applications (WSIA) 1

1. Introduction. 3

2. Notation. 3

3. Glossary. 3

Appendix A. Notices. 7

Appendix B. References. 8

1. Introduction

This document is currently a committee submission in line with the recommendations in the proposed WSIA documentation guidelines. Upon agreement of the committee this document will become wsia-draft-glossary-01.doc and form the basis of OASIS WSIA glossary of terms.

In the true spirit of re-use, this is document is very largely based on fellow OASIS glossary documents as referenced. Comments should be directed to the list at wsia@lists.oasis-open.org

This document comprises an overall glossary for the OASIS WebService Interactive Applications Technical Committee (WSIA) and it’s subgroups. Individual WSIA documents and/or subgroup documents may either reference this document and/or “import” select subsets of terms.

Relevant sources for the terms and definitions herein are referenced in Appendix B. Please refer to those sources for definitions of terms not explicitly defined here. Where possible and convenient, hypertext links directly to definitions within the aforementioned sources are included. Some definitions are quoted directly from the sources; some are modified to fit the context of the OASIS WSIA.

2. Notation

Terms that are slated to be deleted are highlighted like so.

Terms that need to be reviewed or defined are highlighted like so.

Terms that need final acceptance are highlighted like so.

Definition senses and/or options – i.e., we need to decide which one(s) to base our usage on -- are denoted by “(a)”, “(b)”, and so on.

Terms in italics within the glossary refer to other terms that are defined in the glossary.

3. Glossary

Following are the defined terms (to be) used in the WSIA specifications and related documents.

Access	1. To interact with a system entity in order to manipulate, use, gain knowledge of, and/or obtain a representation of some or all of a system entity’s resources. [1] 2. in the system domain, what an End user does to a Web site using a browser, or what a Client does to a Web service; 3. in the business domain, what a Consumer does to a Web service or a Web site hosted by a Producer;
Access Control	Protection of resources against unauthorized access; a process by which use of resources is regulated according to a security policy and is permitted by only authorized system entities according to that policy. [1]
Access Rights	A description of the type of authorized interactions a subject can have with a resource. Examples include read, write, execute, add, modify, and delete. [3]
Account	The set of attributes that together define a user’s access to a given service. Each service may define a unique set of attributes to define an account. An account defines user or system access to a resource or service.
Actor	An entity (i.e. person or system entity) involved in a provisioning use case. Examples of actors include people, application programs, security services, any computing or non-computing services, etc. Actor may be seen as effectively synonymous with system or person.
Administrative Domain	An environment or context that is defined by some combination of one or more administrative policies, Internet Domain Name registrations, civil legal entities (for example, individuals, corporations, or other formally organized entities), plus a collection of hosts, network devices and the interconnecting networks (and possibly other traits), plus (often various) network services and applications running upon them. An administrative domain may contain or define one or more security domains. An administrative domain may encompass a single site or multiple sites. The traits defining an administrative domain may, and in many cases will, evolve over time. Administrative domains may interact and enter into agreements for providing and/or consuming services across administrative domain boundaries.
Administrator	A person who installs or maintains a system (for example, a SAML-based security system) or who uses it to manage system entities, users, and/or content (as opposed to application purposes; see also End User). An administrator is typically affiliated with a particular administrative domain and may be affiliated with more than one administrative domain.
Anonymity	The quality or state of being anonymous, which is the condition of having a name or identity that is unknown or concealed. [1]
Attribute Also see ‘Service Attribute’	A distinct characteristic of an object. An object’s attributes are said to describe the object. Objects’ attributes are often specified in terms of their physical traits, such as size, shape, weight, and color, etc., for real-world objects. Objects in cyberspace might have attributes describing size, type of encoding, network address, etc. Salient attributes of an object is decided by the beholder.
Authentication	To confirm a system entity’s asserted principal identity with a specified, or understood, level of confidence. [2] [8]
Authorization	The process of determining, by evaluating applicable access control information, whether a subject is allowed to have the specified types of access to a particular resource. Usually, authorization is in the context of authentication. Once a subject is authenticated, it may be authorized to perform different types of access. [3]
Browser	A system entity that is used by an end user to access a Web site. A browser provides a run-time environment for distributed application components on the client’s device.
Client	a system entity (not a business entity) that accesses a Web service. Contrast with Browser and Customer.
Company	Any organizational entity
Company Identity/ Acronym/Login Name	The unique identity for an organizational entity with a system
Consumer	a business entity that accesses a Web service or a Web site. Contrast with End user and Customer
Credential	Data that is transferred to establish a claimed principal identity. [4]
Customer	A business entity that purchases goods or services
De-provisioning	Specific term for the deletion of an account from a service.
End User	1. A natural person who makes use of resources for application purposes (as opposed to system management purposes; see Administrator, User). [4] 2. A person who uses a device specific Browser to access a Web site
External Enterprise	Environment that may contain many or all of the following: multiple organizations like suppliers, buyers, partners; managed services; contractors, employees, private to public registry systems.
Host (verb)	to run an application on an execution platform, which typically consists of hardware and software
Identity	The unique identifier for a person, organization, resource, or service.
Intermediary	A business entity that assumes both a consumer and producer role (CxPy) but does not generate or host the final application that is presented to the end-user. For example: FAME in this scenario.
Login, Logon, Sign-On	The process whereby a user presents credentials to an authentication authority, establishes a simple session, and optionally establishes a rich session.
Logout, Logoff, Sign-Off	The process of presenting credentials to an authentication authority, establishing a simple session, and optionally establishing a rich session.
Party	Refers to any person who interacts with the system and/or the network the system is managing.
Person	Represents an individual human
Principal	A system entity whose identity can be authenticated. [8]
Producer	A business entity that hosts a Web service or a Web site
Provider	A business entity that sells access to or use of Web services
Provisioning Action(s)	The action(s) that initiate the process(es) of provisioning – create, activate, modify, suspend, enable, delete, etc.
Provisioning Data	The set of all data elements required to complete a provisioning action. This could include details about the service provider, company, user, service attributes and service options, and so on.
Provisioning Service (PS)	Any system entity that supports the receipt and processing of SPML artifacts
Provisioning Service Point (PSP)	Reference to a given Provisioning Service
Provisioning Service Target (PST)	A resource managed by a PSP. Example PST's are: databases, directories, ERP Applications, Operating Systems, NIS instances, NT domains, individual machines, Applications, or groups of Applications and settings that together denote a service offer, appliances, and so on.
Pull	To actively request information from a system entity.
Push	To provide information to a system entity that did not actively request it.
Requesting Authority (RA)	Party or system that is authorized to request a resource for the party.
Resource	An application or service supporting the provisioning or account or attribute data.
Role	The combination of access rights available to a particular actor.
Security	Security refers to a collection of safeguards that ensure the confidentiality of information, protect the system(s) or network(s) used to process it, and control access to it (them). Security typically encompasses the concepts of secrecy, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It is intended to ensure that a system resists potentially correlated attacks. [2]
Service	1. A specific type of resource that is not physically obtained by a user, but is accessed periodically by the user. [4] 2. See Web Service
Service Attribute	Characteristics or qualifiers of a service – which describe details like type of encoding, network address, mailbox size for email, storage space for backup, and so on.
Service Offer	The unique combination of service attributes and service options that is provisioned to an identity
Service Option	The choices available within a service – which could be custom configured by the service provider as opposed to a service attribute which is inherent to the service. For example, a Gold Option and a Silver Option – which have to be part of the provisioning data.
Service Provider	The organizational entity that provides the service
Session	A lasting interaction between system entities, often involving a user, typified by the maintenance of some state of the interaction for the duration of the interaction.
Site	An informal term for an administrative domain in geographical or DNS name sense. It may refer to a particular geographical or topological portion of an administrative domain, or it may encompass multiple administrative domains, as may be the case at an ASP site.
SPML	Service Provisioning Markup Language. The name for the XML framework proposed by the OASIS PSTC
Subject	A principal identity about which a given provisioning request is made or requested.
System / System Entity	An active element of a computer/network system. For example, an automated process or set of processes, a subsystem, a person or group of persons that incorporates a distinct set of functionality. [1] [7]
Time-Out	A period of time after which some condition becomes true if some event has not occurred. For example, a session that is terminated because its state has been inactive for a specified period of time is said to “time out”.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)	Defined as “a compact string representation for a resource available via the Internet.” URLs are a subset of URI. [7]
User	A natural person who makes use of a system and its resources for any purpose [7]. See also administrator, end user.
Username/User Identity	The unique identity for a user with a system
Vendor	A business entity that sells goods.
Web Service	A Web Service is a software component that is described via WSDL and is capable of being accessed via standard network protocols such as but not limited to SOAP over HTTP.
Web Site	A hosted application that can be accessed by an End user using a browser
XML (Extensible Markup Language)	Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML [6], describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]
XML Namespace	A collection of names, identified by a URI reference, which are used in XML documents as element types and attribute names. An XML namespace is often associated with an XML schema. For example, SAML defines two schemas, and each has a unique XML namespace.

Appendix A. Notices

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Appendix B. References

Many of the definitions in this glossary are based on those found in the references below: [1], [2] , ^[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]