[DR305] authentication, encryption, ...

On Wed, 15 Nov 2000 09:40:00+0500 Randy Waldrop wrote:
>>"...encourage a common 
>>approach for providing facilities such as: authentication, 
>>encryption, reliable delivery, sessions and transactions."
>
>It seems like some of these requirements may actually be higher
>level (application) issues. I would like to hear more arguments that
>they should be in the scope of the XP spec.

It may not be clear from the language.  What is suggested
is that XP have clear *facilities* to create implementations
of these features, not that XP define the features.  Such
facilities would suffice for implementing most required 
implementations (80/20).

Because of the urgent need for these features, it is a good
bet that implementors will immediately begin to introduce their
own home grown solutions, rendering almost all implementations
non-interoperable; that would be a shame, to say the least.

Since the features themselves are clearly out of scope at this
time, this requirement is intended to provide a next-best thing:
a design which promotes "best-practice" in implementing the
features, vastly improving the possibility for interoperability.

Granted there's a slippery slope here, but to withdraw entirely
and make no attempt to address the design problem is to invite
difficulty later.

All the best,
-David