Last time, we began to look at the SMBmeta initiative proposed by PC pioneer Dan Bricklin and brought to my attention by Jamie Lewis at the Burton Group.

SMBmeta specifies an XML data file (smbmeta.xml) which would reside in the root directory of any participating domain (e.g., http://vquill.com/smbmeta.xml) describing the organization, its business and its location. It's primarily intended as a free-to-use catalog entry for a bricks-and-mortar business. At least, that was the general idea behind it.

But the file itself isn't of much use to the average person, so Bricklin has proposed an SMBmeta Ecosystem (http://www.trellixtech.com/smbmetaecosystem.html) as a complete package to foster the development and use of the initiative.

Initially, Bricklin thought there would be independent directory applications that used spider-like technology (i.e., they would traverse the Web looking for smbmeta.xml files) to find and compile the data. Various questions and objections led to the creation of other parts of a complete system. In addition to the data files created by the leaf-points (the enterprises creating smbmeta.xnl files) there are three other parts to Bricklin's system: the SMBmeta Registry, the SMBmeta Proxy and the SMBmeta Affirmation Authority.

The Registry allows SMBmeta data to be stored at various (and multiple) locations around the Web so that there's no need to spider the world every time you want to find data. Registries can be manually or automatically populated using one-off entries, subscribe-and-publish or push-pull technologies.

The Proxy allows one server and/or domain to be the authoritative source of data for multiple enterprises. Very small organizations may not have their own domains(e.g., http://www.<iphost>.net/abcompany/), so there's no way for them to create an http://www.ANC.com/smbmeta.xml file. The proxy server would contain a database/directory of SMBmeta data, which it could submit to a Registry or make available to a spider on behalf of its constituent organizations.

Bricklin sees this as a way to kickstart the initiative, along with enterprising ISPs creating SMBmeta data for their hosted entities. Organizations could continue to provide the data as long as necessary, or as long as the individual enterprises cared to have them do it.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.