OGSA Naming Teleconference - 1  November 2004
=============================================

* Participants

  Ravi Subramaniam (Intel)
  Frank Siebenlist (ANL)
  Andreas Savva (Fujitsu)
  Takuya Mori (NEC/ANL)
  Mark Morgan (UVa)
  Hiro Kishimoto (Fujitsu)
  Bill Horn (IBM)
  Andrew Grimshaw (UVa)
  Mike Behrens (R2AD, LLC)

  Minutes: Andreas Savva

* Review of "Naming in Distributed Systems" 

  - Dated Oct 5
    https://forge.gridforum.org/projects/ogsa-wg/document/ogsa-naming/en/3

  - Andrew added sections on
    - Motivation: These are the standard transparencies
    - Use cases
      - Slant is towards transparency issues
      - Andrew thinking of adding use cases for identity & security

      - An example that came up at an earlier call was how to select a
        'resource' at a specific location, e.g., a specific conference
        room. Might be worth adding as a use case (or non-use case)
        that can be supported using facilites that exist at a higher
        level than the ones described here (naming location
        transparency).

      - Use case names do not make clear the distinction between the
        four use cases listed.  
        - E.g. migrate from failing resource (planned migration, done
          transparently)
                vs
        - Recover from failure (unplanned migration)

     - Andrew to make use cases titles more distinctive, possibly
       merging ones which are not distinct enough.

  - Reviewed properties 
    - Unique: make clearer that 'name' is 'abstract name'
    - Identity: if name is unique is it an identifier? Need assertion
      by some other entity. (Possibly implicit)
    - Authentication: do not have a guarantee that the 'holder' (of
      the name) is the correct entity.
    - Comparable: related to 'unique' above
      - many to one "abstract name" to resource possible
    - (same resource / defined already)
    - Performance: 
      - It is resolution performance of abstract names to addresses
      - Does it refer to absolute time? 
        - It is 'application dependent' but need to be able to get
          good performance
      - Caching can help
    - Language neutral: not dependent on a specific programming language
      - Andrew to also add i18n requirment.

  - Started an initial attempt (incomplete) to prioritize/sort
    properties into classes...

    - Tier 1 (Most important)
      - Uniqueness
      - Sameness
      - Identity
      - Authentication
      - Large name space 
      -...
  
    - Second tier 
      - Widely adopted
      - Not require trust
      -...

  - Got sidetracked into a discussion of whether the "Naming &
    identity connection is inherent or not."

    - If connection is not inherent (as implied in the document) then
      there is another outside mechanism to associate 'name' with
      'identity.'
      - With different environments having different 'implicit'
        assumptions on how secure resolution is. E.g., trust
        implicitly infrastructure services to give right answers.
      - But should call these assumptions out even if they are meant
        to be implicit.
    - There are also different levels of trust; e.g., trust
      resolution vs cryptographic identity guarantees
    - Connection between name & identity becomes heavy-weight only
      when requiring strong guarantees.
    - Not just strong guarantee aspect but also that these are
      separate concepts and should be treated separately.
    - Also different namespaces or schemes (e.g., local or global)
      might provide different guarantees.
    - Identity here does not mean cryptographically strong identity
      (e.g., not a certificate)
    - (Identity as a unique (single) 'string'; many 'names' that can
      point to it; and there is an additional mechanism to bind them.)
    - Another issue is how identity assignment is done.
      - Is it done outside the named entity by some other authority or
        is it done by the entity itself.
      - (Two different models: pgp & ca based approaches)
    - Is identity represented by a unique tag or some information that
      is bound together (by some authority)?

    [
    - Global namespace is union of local namespaces: a local name can
      be made global by, for example, appending the local name to a
      unique global prefixes.
    - Local and global name schemes definitions
      - Take a global name scheme (e.g., x509) and compare with other
        ones, e.g., on heavyweightness.

    - Frank sent out a pointer to the list:
    http://www-unix.gridforum.org/mail_archive/ogsa-wg/2004/11/msg00007.html
    ]

    - It became clear that 'unique,' 'name,' 'identity' are not used
      in the same way by all participants. Agreed that before
      proceeding further need to refine and make sure that there is a
      shared definition.

    - Frank: Maybe a good idea to go through a few examples and point
      what each concept means.

  Action: Andrew to do first draft of what 'unique,' 'name,'
          'identity' mean and discuss these again.
          - Also using examples like Frank suggested.
          - Frank to help.

* V1 comment review

  - Comment that Glossary and V1 are inconsistent.

  - Decided to replace statement in V1 "The abstract name may not be
    globally unique" by  "uniqueness is under discussion"
  - And also revise the glossary accordingly.

  - Also remove the word 'unique' from the 'Name' definition in the
    glossary.