RE: Spec List

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:54 AM
> To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Spec List
>
>
>
> I think that XrML 2.0 should be added to the spec list.
> http://www.xrml.org/index.asp.  This spec covers digital rights
> management, and as far as I can see it has achieved fairly wide
> adoption.  It is interesting that this is an entirely proprietary spec,
> with wide patent rights claimed by the source, ContentGuard,
> http://www.contentguard.com/.  Nonetheless, as far as I can see it is
> plausibly achieving the status of a de facto standard.

This is not at all clear. The OASIS RLTC has made no progress for six
months. What was submitted to this TC differs substantially from what was
"adopted" by MPEG3. Because of ContentGuard spin and Microsoft backing it
has received wide attention and is likely to be supported in Microsoft
products for DRM, but its relationship to Web Services is not clear. There
are a number of other DRM languages out there and some claim to be
unemcumbered by the ContentGuard patents. Meanwhile, there are a number of
other patents which may apply to uses of Xrml. Microsoft is currently
involved in litigation on this issue. A very confusing area to say the
least.
>
> I have also found that my description of SPML (which I admitted I didn't
> understand_ was wildly off the mark.  It would be a kindness if someone
> would provide a simple, two sentence description of what SPML is for
> and, if possible, whether there is anything else in that space.  I note
> that SMPL seems to be about to be ratified by OASIS and, as far as I can
> tell, it is not particularly controversial.  (Or maybe nobody cares
> because there is something else more popular in that space ???)
>
SPML defines provisioning in this way:

"Provisioning is the automation of all the steps required to manage (setup,
amend & revoke) user or system access entitlements or data relative to
electronically published services".

SPML provides a simple message framework for a) initiating a provisioning
process and b) conveying the data necessary to provision specific entities.

Provisioning can be seen as a highly elaborated and specialized subset of
Administration, which in turn is a subset of Management.

There is nothing else in the space as far as I am aware, however it
necessarily overlaps with activites that have a more general scope, such as
WSDM. A future alignment of these two is quite possible.

The main criticisms of SPML have been that is lacks features that some
people consider essential. SPML has published a roadmap which projects
future enhancements designed to remedy this.

Again the link to Web Services is not entirely clear, except for the fact
that SPML is itself a Web Service.

Hal

Received on Wednesday, 29 October 2003 11:53:04 UTC