Hi All,
My initial 2 cents on this is that translating the XACML
Request/Response elements,
w all their descendants to JSON and sending it over HTTP would be
enough to prevent
XACML being labeled as a "SOAP-based" interface, just because we
happen to have one
in the XACML/SAML profile. i.e. I would support using a XACML
JSON/HTTP profile as a
starting point.
Also, as I am sure most people are aware, the Request (section 5.42)
and Response
(section 5.47) context elements, are represented as XML documents in
spec, however,
there is no requirement that these context representations ever
exist as XML, as
long as whatever representation is used (ex. JSON) will produce the
same results.
Therefore from the specifications point of view, a JSON/HTTP
representation is just
as good as an XML representation, or, a Java RMI representation.
This is also mentioned
in section 3.2 (line 496 in wd19 (however, not JSON, which we might
consider adding)).
Thanks,
Rich
On 5/20/2011 5:55 PM, Craig R Forster wrote:
Hi all,
I agree that calling such an API a "REST" API is a misnomer.
>> So what is of interest is merely the
HTTP protocol indeed and binding the XACML request / response
to GET or POST verbs along with a potential mapping into
simple HTTP request parameters or a JSON payload.
If the payload is an XACML request in it's currently-defined XML
form, then I don't see any benefit to using HTTP POST rather
than SOAP. SOAP has better tooling, and only adds two elements
as a wrapper in it's minimal form ( <soap:Envelope> and
<soap:Body>). For there to be any benefit I think the
payload would have to be JSON, in which case we'd have to define
a canonical way to represent XACML requests and responses in
JSON form.
Mapping attributes in an XACML request to individual HTTP GET
parameters seems cumbersome. I think the better approach is to
define an entire request as a JSON object and send that via
whatever HTTP verb is most applicable.
However, I think it'd be more prudent to first define a
canonical WSDL for an XACML PDP web service. The TC has been
reluctant to do this in the past, for whatever reason, and while
it doesn't overlap with a JSON over HTTP protocol I think that
it's worth standardizing first.
Regards,
Craig
David
Brossard ---05/20/2011 10:27:11 AM---Hi, That's true... This
might be more about exposing the PDP with the lowest
From:
David Brossard
<>
To:
Cc:
Date:
05/20/2011 10:27 AM
Subject:
Re: [xacml] PDP REST Interface - proposal
Hi,
That's true... This might be more about exposing the PDP with
the lowest possible barrier to entry - making an authorization
request as simple as can be.
Since the PDP is stateless by design, a pure REST approach is
therefore a mismatch since REST is aimed at providing support
for stateful web services.
So what is of interest is merely the HTTP protocol indeed and
binding the XACML request / response to GET or POST verbs along
with a potential mapping into simple HTTP request parameters or
a JSON payload.
Cheers,
David.
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 5:04 PM, <> wrote:
David,
From: David Brossard [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 4:20 PM
To: xacml
Subject: [xacml] PDP REST Interface - proposal
>> Following the call yesterday, I would like to kick
start some discussions around the possibility around designing
a standard REST interface for a PDP. The idea would be to have
a PEP-PDP interaction using REST. <<
I don't see any "resources" in your proposal. So
I guess you're just talking about an HTTP interface, not REST.
>> 2 possible methods: GET and POST
* GET
o Input: Send in a URL e.g. http://foo.bar/AuthZ/?a=value&b=value2&c=value3
o Output: the decision (the whole XACML decision? simply the
decision string e.g. "Permit"? an HTTP status code?)
o Pros: extremely easy to consume
o Cons: the request sent / response received are not valid
XACML requests / responses.
* This means a layer on the PDP side (in the REST
wrapping) needs to map from a HTTP GET parameter to a XACML
attribute
* In addition, if the response is merely a status code or a
String, it breaks the XACML standard in the sense that
obligations / advice would be lost <<
I guess you could model Decisions as HTTP status
codes:
Permit - 200 OK
Deny - 403 Forbidden
NotApplicable - 404 Not Found
Indeterminate - 500 Internal Server Error
The obligations/ advice could then be in the response body.
As for the mapping from HTTP parameters to XACML attributes, I
don't think this is a big deal. I'm assuming most
implementations don't use the XML format of the spec
internally, so there has to be some sort of mapping anyway.
This new mapping seems like a fairly easy addition.
>> * POST
o Input: the entire XACML request in its XML form
o Output: the entire XACML response in its XML form
o Pros: complies with the XACML standard
o Cons: what is the benefit other than performance? It doesn't
make adoption easier <<
Since an authorization request is idempotent, I would propose
PUT instead.
>> * POST using JSON
o Input: the JSON representation of a XACML request
o Output: the JSON representation of a XACML response
o Pros: all the richness of XACML. The format is JSON which
developers seems to prefer.
o Cons: perhaps a bit too cumbersome. <<
A lot of web services these days support both XML and JSON.
The former is better for consumption by server code, while the
latter is easier to consume by a JavaScript client.
>> What are your thoughts? <<
Sounds interesting. Do you have any (potential) customers that
expressed interest in this? What are the use cases you are
trying to solve with this proposal that you can't with the
current spec?
>> Do you think any standardization effort / profile
definition effort should be driven by a developer community
willing to use authorization and which would want to sacrifice
the richness of XACML for the sake of simplicity? <<
You won't lose any richness in the PUT variant.
I'm not sure about GET either, that depends on the mapping of
XACML attributes to HTTP parameters.
Thanks,
Ray
--
David Brossard, M.Eng, SCEA, CSTP
Solutions Architect
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