CF Requirements: 2) Identity Vocabulary

GENI Control Framework WG Members, interested GENI participants, and
Giridhar Manepalli of CNRI,


A first DRAFT (v01.3) of the GENI Control Framework Requirements
document has been completed, and can be found at
http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/GeniControlFrameworkRequirements 

A discussion of the document on February 25, 2009 resulted in the
identification of 10 discussion items, which can be found at
http://groups.geni.net/geni/attachment/wiki/GeniControlFrameworkRequir
ements/030609_CFRequireReviewTopics.pdf



This email begins a discussion thread on:  2)  Identity Vocabulary

I would like to invite Giridhar Manepalli of CNRI to begin the
discussion, and then others are invited to join in.  CNRI is working
on the Digital Object Architecture project for GENI, and has extensive
expertise in large registries.



2a)  During the discussion, Larry Lannom of CNRI made the point that a
system like GENI needs a precise vocabulary or ontology,  that is
shared by all suites. (This is absolutely essential when multiple GENI
suites that are federated together, as expected.) This will apply to
principals, aggregates and slices.

2b)  The current DRAFT states:  
"Each principal (also aggregate, component, slice) shall have a
globally-unique name and/or a globally unique numerical identifier."

2c)  Discussion:
Current prototype implementations use a UUID as a unique identifier,
which is a long "random number" that is (with a very high probability)
unique within one suite, and also among all suites.  

However, there is no way to take a UUID and decide which suite it is
in, and thus there is no way to find a UUID in a suite registry
without checking the registries of all suites.

2d)  A proposed solution is to have the requirements read:  
"Each principal (also aggregate, component, slice) shall have a
globally-unique name and/or a globally unique numerical identifier,
where part of the name and/or numerical identifier directly specifies
the identity of the GENI suite."

2e)  Continued discussion:
If this is done with a numerical identifier, the identifier could be
broken into fields:
    suiteID.elementID
This is the approach taken in the CNRI Handle System, and it is known
to be robust and very scalable.  Somewhere, there must be a mapping
from suiteID to GENI suite.  Where?
The elementID must be unique within a suite, and could be a UUID or a
number picked by another method that can be assured to be unique.
Which methods make the most sense?

If a suite wants to use unique names, how could that be arranged?
Is there a place for URNs?



We look forward to a continuing, lively discussion, working towards a
'rough consensus".

Harry E. Mussman
Control Framework Systems Engineer

GENI Project Office
BBN Technologies
10 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 873-4282 - Office
(781) 266-8479 - Mobile
(617) 873-4888 - Fax
hmussman@...
www.bbn.com



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