- Microsoft lays out SQL Server road map
- Credit card skimming
- Nortel's stock market capitalization plummets
- The Obama campaign's Search Engine to Nowhere
- Will Apple be forced to make more money?
Newsletters | Podcasts | Chats | Opinions | RSS Feeds | This Week In Print | IT Careers | Community | Reports | Downloads | Slideshows | New Data Center
Partner Sites:Application Performance Solutions | App Performance | Networking Solution | SafeGuard Enterprise Solution Center | SOA | Test your Web Filter | Value of WDS
Dave Kearns provides the information you need to evaluate, install and maintain your corporate identity management system.
At the Catalyst conference in 2001, provisioning rivals Business Layers and Access360 sat on different sides of the conference meeting room (the ballroom of the Marriott hotel in San Diego) and hurled catcalls and invective at each other. A year later, they'd matured, as had the technology, and - under the auspices of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) joined to help form the Provisioning Services Technical Committee. A year after that, in 2003, the committee demonstrated the first release of the Provisioning Services Markup Language, soon changed to the Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML), in action.
We saw that XML messages containing provisioning data could be exchanged between and among different provisioning engines. Joy ensued. Followed by ennui. Nobody did very much with SPML, but it was, after all, just a 1.0 release - and no one can do much with a 1.0 release.
Just as I was beginning to think that SPML might be merely an asterisk in the history of identity management, the wonderful folks at OASIS, on behalf of the Provisioning Services Technical Committee (it never did change ITS name!) released Version 2 of SPML into the wild.
<aside>If you visit the committee's Web pages as I did last week, don't be surprised if the big news on the front page is the release of Version 1 back in 2003. Evidently Version 2 was developed and released in stealth mode!</aside>
Since the TC's Web pages appear to be not very well organized at the moment, you can find the relevant Version 2 documents with these URLs:
* OASIS SPML V2.0
* OASIS SPML V2.0 - DSML V2.0 Profile
* OASIS SPML V2.0 - XSD Profile
This is an important release. Following the guidelines in SPML 2 should bring about true automated provisioning between and among disparate organizations as easily as we can implement it within any single organization. That doesn't make it simple, but it does make it possible. Study, and learn.
Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.

Ever since there have been stocks and shares there have been so called "pump 'n' dump" scams. This...
Spyware: Know Your EnemyLike Macavity, the fictional feline in T. S. Eliot's well-known poem, spyware may be considered to...
The Online Shadow Economy: A Billion Dollar Market For Malware AuthorsMalware, meaning computer viruses, trojans and spyware, is about money. The teenagers who wrote...

Microsoft SQL Server has enjoyed phenomenal success as a database server. Its relatively low cost,...
Minimizing the Risk of Information Security Breaches: Best Practices for SOA Governance and Compliance - Live October 21Today's enterprises face more information security risks and vulnerabilities than ever before....
Migrating to Windows Vista: Necessity and OpportunityThe Vista era of Windows is here. Yet most organizations will retain Windows XP alongside new Vista...

Discover why Unified Threat Management Firewalls are ready for the enterprise today. High...
The Evolution of Network SecurityWe have so many holes punched in our firewalls today that many industry insiders question the value...
The self-managed networkWe aren't there yet, but advances in network and systems management tools are making it possible to...
Partner Content
Brilliantly simple security and control solutions for email, web and endpoint
www.sophos.com
Stopping data leakage
Learn how to exploit your current security investment to control the information that flows into, through and out of your network.
Download the white paper.
Why detection rates aren't enough
Evaluating endpoint security products is a time-consuming and daunting task. Learn the six critical questions you need to ask prospective vendors to get the right endpoint solution.
Download the white paper.
Applications: taking back control
Employees installing unauthorized applications is a growing threat to business security and productivity. Cost-effectively reduce this threat by integrating control into your malware protection.
Learn more today.
Comment