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I have discussed the Eclipse Higgins project on numerous occassions over at the MWD blog (here, here and here for example). I recently had the chance to discuss Higgins with Tony Nadalin, Chief Security Architect for IBM's software group and one of the participants in the project.

The key component of Higgins is the Identity Attribute Service (IdAS), an abstraction layer that is designed to allow developers to access identity data in a variety of repositories (LDAP, RDBMS etc) without having to concern themselves with the underlying data access API. Since first encountering Higgins, I have often wondered why the IdAS is any different from virtual directory solutions - apart from the obvious support within Eclipse - so I asked Tony. The answer is the IdAS Data Model which aims to

provide a common representation for identity, profile and relationship data in order to provide interoperability.

In other words, IdAS not only attempts to mask the the complexity of dealing with a wide variety of repositories but also to grapple with differences in semantics and so provide developers with a common way of thinking about and accessing identity data. The development of a common data model is a significant undertaking and I can imagine the lengthy and no doubt heated debates amongst the likes of IBM and Novell in coming up with it.

Higgins will eventually make its way into "enterprise identity management" solutions from the likes of IBM and Novell (something confirmed to me by both Tony and Dale Olds, one of his counterparts at Novell) so it is definitely worth watching. IdAS and the associated data model should certainly make life easier for the vendors grappling with the proliferation of identity data stores and formats within their own product. It should also help the customers of those products, many of whom are gappling with the fragmentation of identity data I discuss in our identity management report.

Posted by nmacehiter in Identity Management |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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