02/09/2007: "ESBs and other stuff"

I have been looking into ESBs (Enterprise Service Bus) as a way of architecting service oriented systems. It is part of my overall pursue to identify ways of providing security along with other nice things such as (integrity, confidentiallity, etc) without putting too much pressure on the services themselves. I like the idea of alleviating such problems even if the solution requires 3rd trusted parties. We are already using 3rd trusted parties to deal with identities (see federation) so why not push the boundaries further. I am still not 100% convinced and there are a lot of people who disagree with the whole notion of ESBs but experience shows that it is the way to 'really' loosely coupled systems. Wikipedia has a lot on the subject for a brief encounter with the area.

I have also been doing some work on the issue of delegation and delegated credentials. I am in the process of collecting delegation scenarios for the purpose of building a repository of delegation patterns and solutions. Having gone through the almost impossible task of trying to get XACML to understand delegation without totally messing up its semantics, I am hoping delegation patterns for identity credentials will also help me to evaluate other security related technologies.

any pointers, papers would be greatly apppreciated... smile