A PPARC funded project Report from grid/web service WG Guy Rixon IVOA interoperability meeting Cambridge MA, May 2004

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 2 Work Packages The group will progress five work packages: 1. VObs Support interfaces (previously called “Standard Interfaces”) 2. Asynchronous Activities on SOAP services 3. Conformance to WS-I profile for SOAP 4. Single-sign-on Authentication 5. Distributed storage (MySpace, MyDB etc.)

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 3 VObs Support Services Renamed from “standard interfaces” Three interfaces to be included: getRegistration (optional) “heartbeat”/getAvailability (mandatory) harvestLog (optional) Go to concrete design (WSDL, XSD, prototype) ASAP

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 4 Asynchronous activities General principal of proposal accepted Clear need exists Use of WS-RF accepted Some reservations about WS-BaseNotification Need to check reliable-messaging semantics Make this feature optional Needs prototypes and/or closer reading of WS-RF specs to check details

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 5 Single-sign-on authentication The SSO proposal to be progressed… …but split into two IVOA docs: Wire protocol (use of WS-Security etc.) Public Key Infrastructure Allows the wire protocol to be prototyped while we debate how to supply the credentials it needs.

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 6 SSO wire-protocol Accepted as viable way of securing messages Based on WS-Security/WS-Trust/digital signature standards Compatibility questions Interoperates with “Shibboleth”? Interoperates with grid services/portals? GTR to check

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 7 Public Key Infrastructure Use of community services found favour Only concerned with authentication for now Community-based authorization to come later Issues: Will service providers accept the scheme? May have too many communities for comfort? Guarding against spoofed communities How to delegate credentials to services? Need prototypes ASAP Need further debate of details (mailing list)

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 8 WS-I profile for SOAP Adopted as goal Conformance limited by SOAP toolkits May need an IVOA profile for use of WS-I profile WS-I publish a conformance-testing kit Gather existing reports on conformance of toolkits Axis,.NET, Perl SOAP::Lite etc Do our own tests for IVOA standard services

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 9 Distributed storage Group to specify a standard façade for existing storage systems Integrate SRB, MyDB, MySpace etc. Get and put of data sets with various protocols Need written proposal first, then prototypes Useful as VObs service in its own right Acts as test case for GWS-WG profile on WS-Security

GWS-WG report, IVOA May 2004, side 10 Volunteers sought! We need IVOA member projects to help with prototyping Thanks to all who volunteered already Please send offers of help to the mailing list