Status of D-AG006

Status summary on D-AG006 as of March 13, 2002.

Goal statement:
On the goal statement itself, there was one input suggesting the
statement was too broad and impossible to achieve, and a replacement
was proposed.  However, (1) there is sufficient elasticity in the
original statement in that what it can be stretched to mean broad
may also be contracted to mean narrow, thus there it could not be
definitively concluded that set goal was too broad.  (2) The replacement
text, suitable as it was, did not help narrowing the original scope
in tangible ways.  (3) Arguments could be made, and one was made,
for the originally stated goal being achievable.  At this juncture,
the D-AG006 goal statement stands, in its original text.

Interesting fallouts from impromptu topics arising from discussions
in the D-AG006 thread are summarized below.


Privacy:
Privacy can mean different things in different contexts.
We had no clue how it got into the charter to begin with.
We tried to get a clarification from anyone who might give
a definition of what privacy as stated next to security in
the WG charter was supposed to mean in the context of WS 
architecture.  Nobody's come forward yet.
An educated guess, coupled with a tabulation of some possible
privacy scenarios where "privacy" was presumed to be synonymous
with "anonymity," was set up to troll for responses.  No luck
there.  So, unless someone comes forward to stake out a
position for privacy, it may not get addressed in WS-Arch.
As of now, it's fair to presume privacy work, if any is to
be done at all in W3C's WS-Arch, will not be done under the
auspices of D-AG006.


Glossary:
Suresh made an excellent suggestion to adopt the contents in
RFC 2828 (Glossary for Internet Security) as a part of our
WSsec glossary.  Editors, please take note.


QoS:
Whether QoS is an architectural function remains debatable.
Nonetheless, arguments for excluding it from D-AG006's scope
were sufficiently conclusive.


Reliable Messaging (RM):
Suggestions were made to include reliable messaging (RM) in D-AG006.
The upshot of ensuing discussions could be summed up as: RM itself
cannot be in D-AR006, but it may be in a separate WS-Arch goal
as its merit may warrant.   (Take care to not confuse securing RM
with RM itself.  The former is of security, The latter is not.)
In the interest of ensuring the public that the probing interest
to include RM in D-AG006, as initially expressed by Roger, had
its fair shot in the WG's security deliberation so far and thus
we don't have to make unnecessary re-visits, I'm enclosing below
an excerpt from my responses to several off-line inquiries and
nudgings from individuals concerning RM's prospect in D-AG006.

   It's a lost cause trying to get RM into a security charter.
   To get it into security, you need to begin with a threat model
   that's RM-unique.  (Recall securing RM, which is generically
   the same as securing messaging, is security.  RM itself is
   not.)  Then you need to think of what security primitives
   that may fit the bill.  The known security primitives are:
   encryption, key exchange, digital signature, message
   digest, ...   I can't list them all here off the top of
   my head, but I know darned sure there ain't none for RM.
   (Recall also I said there's not one [known] security
   primitive for guaranteeing data arrival, which is the
   quintessence of RM.  To make up a new one, you need to
   establish a threat model first.  I'd love to see it if
   you can come up with one.  That would be original.)

   That said, I should mention that I have no problem with
   including RM in the WS-Arch, if someone chooses to champion
   for it.


Transaction Processing (TP):
The RM discussion also led to the mention that we might as
well include transaction processing as a separate goal.
However, there's no champion for it yet.
In any case, TP is not a part of D-AG006.


Requirement tidbits:
There were touched-on discussions that were very
requirement related.  Since requirements deserve focused
treatments of their own, their full discourse were deferred
to some later agenda.


That's all, folks!

Joe Hui
Exodus, a Cable & Wireless service

Received on Wednesday, 13 March 2002 17:53:01 UTC