SAML, developed by the Security Services Technical Committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), is an XML-based framework for communicating user authentication, entitlement, and attribute information. As its name suggests, SAML allows business entities to make assertions regarding the identity, attributes, and entitlements of a subject (an entity that is often a human user) to other entities, such as a partner company or another enterprise application.
Read the rest of this entry »
Modern Geographical Information Systems (GIS) [1] provide a service-oriented architecture for interacting with geographical data sets and related maps. Web-based GIS systems are architected around the same principles as more general Web service systems based on SOAP [2], WSDL [3], and REST. Mirroring the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS Web service standards-making bodies, the Open Geospatial Consortium [5] defines open standards for messages, XML data formats, and access protocols that are specific to the GIS community. In addition to OGC-based services, there are many companies (such as ESRI and AutoDesk) that provide proprietary, commercial solutions. Services from these various providers are not normally interoperable.
Read the rest of this entry »