© 2006 The University of Chicago Grouper Backgrounder for Authorization WG Tom Barton, U Chicago
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Functional Highlights Group management capabilities Basic group & membership management Subgroups Composite groups (union, intersection, complement) Distributed authorities Delegation of authority Custom group types & attributes Indirect membership traceback Grouper is a management tool Maintains group data & metadata in an RDBMS Can manage any object presented to it as a “subject”
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Components & Requisites Components Java API Java UI (extremely mutable) XML import/export tool Command line shell Infrastructure requisites Hibernate for object persistence (supports most RDBMS’s) Subject API for integration with identity sources UI: Servlet API v2.3 REMOTE_USER or internal authN hook Tarballs API UI QuickStart package includes tomcat, database, identity source, etc
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Privilege Model & Attribute Management Per-group privileges ADMIN, UPDATE, READ, VIEW, OPTIN, OPTOUT Groups ↔ Attributes duality Groups are lists of members Members belong to a list of groups Group names are attribute values of member objects Grouper also manages Naming Stems URN names and delegation of naming authority Groups are named within a URN prefix = “naming stem” Per-naming stem privileges CREATE – can create groups with this naming stem STEM – Create subordinate stems, assign CREATE priv Privilegees are lists of “subjects” So, group management capabilities apply to managing privileges
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Subject API
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Generic Integration Architecture
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Status, Links Grouper v1.0 RC1 released July 12 Grouper v1.0 to be released July Grouper Wiki Grouper Wiki Docs Code Product, project, & community support Almost a complete solution. Lacking: Near-real-time provisioning U Chicago, others will have JNDI provisioner “real soon now” WS or other run-time query interfaces Cornell AXIS-based prototype Roadmap Aging of groups & memberships (v1.1) Change notification (v1.1+)
caBIG AuthZ WG17 July Possible Q&A Areas Run-time group query service Systems integration Federations, VOs, widely distributed authorities Proxy IdPs, Service Centers