Subject: RE: [XCON] Policies in the data model

From: "Chris Boulton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:57:49 -0000

Hi,

the biggest open issue in the data model is policies. We need to decide:

1) whether policies (e.g., who can perform certain tasks like adding or 
removing a user) are in or out of the data model's scope.

[Chris Boulton] My feeling is that this should be included in the Data
Model.

2) if they are in scope, whether we follow a syntactic (e.g., user A can

modify element <foo>) or semantic (e.g., user A can add new users to the

conference) approach.

[Chris Boulton] I lean towards a semantic approach simply as it allows
us to model the policies and permissions more accurately - in the scope
of use.

3) the granularity to use. Whether to have pre-defined roles where 
higher roles are authorized to perform a super set of the operations 
performed by lower roles, or to have groups of users (similar to Unix 
groups).

[Chris Boulton] To be honest, I'd only ever considered the inheritance
mechanism.  Now that you mention a 'groups' style that might also be
quite flexible.  It would allow specific inclusion/exclusion for
specific tasks etc. - rather than just relying on inheritance of a
lesser role.

Chris.

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From: "Chris Boulton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:22:39 -0000

I generally find that those with the voice of previous experience (both
from an engineering + protocol creation perspective) have the best take
on such topics.  With XCON's history in mind, I 100% agree with
Henning's last statement:

'If we can't quickly agree on a minimalist set of policies, it's a  
good sign that this isn't ready for protocol work'.

Chris.

-----Original Message-----
From: Henning Schulzrinne [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: 13 March 2007 12:07
To: Chris Boulton
Cc: Gonzalo Camarillo; XCON; Aki Niemi
Subject: Re: [XCON] Policies in the data model

I would argue that policies are generally a rat-hole and we may want  
to punt on these for now. In SIMPLE, it has taken years to finish the  
policy documents, and the problem there is much more constrained.  
(And, as one of the co-authors, I'm pretty sure the solution is over- 
engineered.)

Or, alternatively, have an extremely minimal, but extensible, policy  
set that addresses only two questions:

- who can modify the conference description
- who can create a conference from a template

Once you get to the "can create conferences with no more than 5  
members, but only on alternate Tuesdays that aren't holidays", we'll  
be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the WG.

If we can't quickly agree on a minimalist set of policies, it's a  
good sign that this isn't ready for protocol work.

Henning

On Mar 13, 2007, at 5:03 AM, Chris Boulton wrote:

> Gonzalo - I would just like to add to my previous comment.  If, for  
> the
> sake of progress, the group decides to bump policies from the Data  
> Model
> then I will not object.  The critical path at this moment in time is
> progress and not another blockade.
>
> Chris.
>