Anne Anderson wrote:
> 3. WI#13 Optional Target Elements
>
> This is being done for economy and readability; it would not be
> backwards compatible. Polar is happy with the optionality of
> Subjects, Resources, Actions, [Environments] - thinks it is
> actually semantically more consistent. Simon prefers leaving it,
> but does not object if others want it. Polar notes that
> <Subjects></Subjects> is false. <Subjects> is modelled as a
> disjunctive sequence - absence of any elements is an edge case.
>
> ACTION: put Polar's note about <Subjects></Subjects> being false.
i disagree on the readability comment. from a purely philosophical
perspective i continue to be a proponent of the Any* nomenclature for
the simple reason is that i believe it makes policies far *more*
understandable to humans (no offense intended, but that rules out the
vast majority of you on the list as a result of your in depth knowledge
of the subject skewing your perceptions toward the 'biological syntax
evaluation processing unit' end of the spectrum ;o).
is it verbose? is it unnecessary? yes and yes, so long as you look at it
as a medium for evaluating real-time decisions. is that we are trying to
develop here? i would say no. xacml is an *interchange* mechanism. as
polar and others have pointed out on numerous occasions the use of 'all
this tagging' is horrifically cumbersome, yet we accept that fact
because it provides a means by which disparate approaches, technologies
and agendas can develop a common ground for interoperability.
to the best of my knowledge, no one is actually performing evaluations
directly against an XML document. so as i see it, unless someone can
make the case that Any* actually creates ambiguity (i have yet to see
such), what we are really talking about here is the desire to minimize
the conversion of a standard interchange format to internal processing
constructs at the expense of [human] clarity. that is a mistake in my
opinion.
b
