Policy Workshop - 2/21/03

To satisfy my Action Item from today's meeting, here is a brief report on the recent Policy Workshop.

- The Workshop was sponsored by Sun, and had the participation of about 20 people (if I remember well), including myself.
- The focus of the meeting was the "characterization of the policy related functionality required to support the interoperable use of mechanisms, including, but not limited to, the SOAP message security mechanisms being defined by the Web Services Security TC" (from the presentation slides).
- It was unclear whether work should only address security policies, or Web services policies in general. Most attendees came from a security background and security is their primary interest, so a security bias is to be expected.
- Discussions took place about which standard organization would be appropriate for carrying out the work. A few people stated their preference for starting a Policy TC under OASIS.
- It was unclear what kind of relationship should exist with WS-Policy and related specs. (I suspect the temptation is high for starting from scratch).
- Most of the meeting consisted of brainstorming, and no clearly defined next steps were formulated, except for the proposal that a draft Charter be circulated (but I have not seen it yet).

Ugo