RE: draft presentation on conformance for F2F, for review

Title: notes from conformance subgroup meeting, for review

Does 
the group have a recommendation on this issue?

 

ISSUE:[MS-3-02: Browser Partition]

Should the Web Browser be a SAML Conformance Partition, different from the Authentication Authority 
partition?

This was identified as F2F#3-7.

 

I don't see 
anything in the presentation. Does that mean your answer is 
"no"?

 

Hal

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Griffin 
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 
5:21 PM
To: 'Lynne Rosenthal'; 'Mark Skall'; 
''; 'Gayathri Krishnamurthy'
Cc: 
; 'PATO,JOE (HP-PaloAlto,ex1)'
Subject: draft 
presentation on conformance for F2F, for review

  
hi 
  -

  
 

  
i've 
  attached a draft of the 1/2 hour presentation on conformance for the F2F, 
  Tuesday morning. Let me know of any 
  additions/corrections/suggestions?

  
 

  
thanks!

  
 

  
bob

  
 

  
 

  
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Griffin 
  [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 
  10:16 AM
To: ; 
  ''; ''
Subject: notes 
  from conformance subgroup meeting

  
SAML Conformance Sub-group meeting 17-Aug-01 
  

  
Attendees: 
  
        Lynne Rosenthal (NIST) 
  
        Mark 
  Skall (NIST) 
        Gayathri Krishnamurthy (Sena Consulting) 
  
        Maneesh Bhandan (Sena Consulting) 
  
        Bob Griffin (Entrust) 

  
Actions: 
  
        Bob: prepare presentation for F2F with issues discussed 
  at today's meeting and distribute to sub-group for review.

  
        Bob: continue to define Conformance Program spec test 
  cases and include design-level information. 

Summary: 
  
        We 
  quickely reviewed status of conformance work: 
  
        
          - 
  Conformance Clause is in SAML spec, as presented to June F2F 
  
        
          - 
  Conformance Program spec is under development; updated since June F2F with 
  test cases 
        
          - 
  Schedule for conformance docs and test suite to be determined after August 
  F2F 
        Lynne and Mark reviewed the Oasis Conformance TC 
  meeting/concall yesterday. 
  
        
          - 
  Documents outlining recommended conformance program for OASIS are being edited 
  and reissued, using examples (including from SAML) and with stronger 
  recommendations ("shall" rather than "should")

  
        
          - 
  Would be helpful to develop stronger interaction between SAML and ebXML 
  conformance groups 
        We then looked at several issues: 
  
        
          1) Hal 
  Lockhart's issue (attached) of whether bindings should be specified as part of 
  conformance, or only protocols. Recommendation from sub-group (to be presented 
  to TC at F2F) is that conformance test suite be implemented for all bindings 
  in the standard, that conformance be defined in terms of protocols, but with 
  organization claiming conformance specifying which bindings were 
  tested.

  
        
          2) 
  Should test cases include all standard bindings. Recommendation was that we do 
  so, so that the test suite can be built with all bindings.

  
        
          3) How 
  should test cases handle optional elements of assertions, protocols and/or 
  bindings?  Recommendation was that test suite verify that any 
  implementation or application using extensions has correctly specified the 
  extension / condition, but that the extension or condition itself will not be 
  tested by the standard SAML conformance test suite. Also need to verify with 
  TC whether registry for extensions is desirable.

  
        
          4) How 
  should test cases be implemented: for example, by test client inspecting 
  formats of produced assertions, by requiring applications/implementations to 
  interact with black-box consumer/producer? Recommendation is that this be 
  explored in detail with regard to differences between testing profiles and 
  testing protocols, particularly with relation to issue raised by 
  Hal.

  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
  

  
ISSUE:[MS-3-01: BindingConformance] 
  

  
Should protocol bindings be the subject of 
  conformance? The bindings sub 
group 
  is defining both SAML Bindings and SAML Profiles. It has been proposed 
  
that both of these would be the subject of 
  independent conformance tests. 

  
The following definitions have been 
  proposed: 

  
SAML Binding: SAML Request/Response 
  Protocol messages are mapped onto 
underlying communication protocols. (SOAP, BEEP) 

  
SAML Profile: formats for combining 
  assertions with other data objects. 
These objects may be communicated between various system entities. 
  This 
might involve intermediate 
  parties. 

  
This suggests that a Profile is a complete 
  specification of the SAML aspects 
of some use case. It provides all the elements needed to implement a 
  real 
world scenario, including the 
  semantics of the various SAML Assertions, 
Requests and Responses. 

  
A Binding would simply specify how SAML 
  Assertions, Requests and Responses 
would be carried by some protocol. A Binding might be used as a 
  building 
block in one or more 
  Profiles, or be used by itself to implement some use 
case not covered by SAML. In the later case, it 
  would be necessary for the 
parties 
  involved to agree on all aspects of the use case not covered by the 
  
Binding. 

  
Thus conformance testing of Bindings might 
  be undesirable for two related 
reasons: 

  
·       The 
  number of independent test scenarios is already large. It seems 
  
undesirable to test something that does 
  not solve a complete, real-world 
problem. 

  
·       
  Parties would be able to claim "SAML Conformance" by conforming to a 
  
Binding, although they would not be able 
  to actually interoperate with 
others in a practical situation, except by reference to a private 
  agreement. 
This would likely draw a 
  negative response from end users and other 
observers. 

  
The advantages of testing the conformance 
  of Bindings include: 

  
·       
  Simplifying testing procedures when a Binding is used in several 
  
Profiles that a given party wishes to 
  conform to. 

  
·       Allow 
  SAML to be used in scenarios not envisioned by the Profiles. 

  
This was identified as F2F#3-2.