Identity and service provisioning / Discussion / Developers: Some queries regarding Provisioner

Hi All,

I went thro http://identitymngr.sourceforge.net/architecture-view.html link...it's quite nicely explained..but aroused few queries:

1) The functionality is quite understood now..but one thing I m not getting is how customer care 'work orders' are getting inserted as requests in Operation's Queue table?

2) I suppose 'Identity Stores' are external systems...(on seperate machines)..so is the execution of Provisioning Commands equivalent to invoking an RPC on Web Service Provider (with each Identity Store acting as Web Service Provider) or is it that the Provisioner is the Web Service Provider?
Actually I am trying to map the web services technologies with Provisioner...that is..who is acting as UDDI Registry and who is the Server?

3) What are 'Rules'? Why does Provisioner applies rules to Work Orders? I couldnot find some documentation abt Rules on the site.

4) How is a new Identity Store introduced..is it manual creation of an XML file or auto generated..or is the number of such Stores constant?

Thanks and Regards,
Uttam

Hi Uttam!

I'm glad you found the architecture description informative. I'm still working on it to improve and augment its contents.

1) Customer care system (i.e. Requesting Authority in OASIS SPML sense), is responsible for inserting its requests (aka work orders) by accessing the DB where the operation's queue resides. It can do so by using JDBC or ODBC. From a user perspective the experience goes like this:

    a. The user (e.g. a customer care representative) receives a customer petition to create a new user in the service provider (e.g. Telco) network.
    b. Using the customer care system, the user, enters all the necessary information and submits the work order.
    c. Customer care system process the work order and sends it to the provisioning server (i.e., Provisioner).
    d. Provisioning server executes the corresponding task(s) in the corresponding identity store(s) (i.e., Provisioning service targets in OASIS SPML sense) and sends a response to the customer care system informing the result of the work order.

2) Identity stores are external systems. OASIS SPML refers to them as provisioning service targets (i.e.,PST). PSTs contains user identity information (e.g. name, email address, certificates, service subscriptions). Examples of identity stores might be an LDAP directory server, GSM HLR, Exchange Server, Active Directory, etc.
On the other hand, Provisioner acts as a web-service client when sending SOAP requests to an identity store that receives provisioning requests via SOAP. And it acts as a web-service server when receiving provisioning requests from an RA (i.e requesting authority) that is able to send provisioning requests through SOAP (Note: This feature is not yet implemented, we are currently working on it, see (http://sourceforge.net/pm/task.php?func=detailtask&project_task_id=143560&group_id=204942&group_project_id=53945). For now we only receive provisioning requests via direct inserts on operation's queue SQL table).

3) Today's complex and etherogeneous service provider's infrastructure pose a challenge to the user-provisioning process. With several identity stores from different vendors and containing different user information schemas the need rise for a mediation system between the RA and PST. This mediation system, Provisioner in our case, should have the means to know where and how the user should be provisioned/de-provisioned. In Provisioner, this knowledge is implemented through XML configuration files (i.e., rules.xml, service.xml and routes.xml) that acts as a mapping between RA's and the underlying etherogeneous service network.

4)Good question! Here is where our flexible design comes in place. If the identity store that you are adding supports one of the protocols that we have already implemented (e.g. Telnet, SSH2, SOAP, SQL) it would be a matter of adding a new pair of identity store XML configuration files (i.e. new_identity_store.xml and new_identity_store_responses.xml). Please check (http://identitymngr.sourceforge.net/howto-config-idstores.html) to learn how to configure a new identity store. On the other hand, if the new identity store only supports a protocol that provisioner does not yet support, a new set of adapter, connector and requests classes should be created. Please check (http://identitymngr.sourceforge.net/howto-dev-adapters.html) to learn how to develop a new identity store adapter.

Hope this answers your questions. Do not hesitate to ask for further information.

Thanks for collaborating!

Cheers,
/GE.-

Some queries regarding Provisioner

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Some queries regarding Provisioner

Some queries regarding Provisioner

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Some queries regarding Provisioner