Development Tasks

This is a list of concrete and abstract tasks that have already been identified as good next steps for this project. Interested? Feel free to sign up for some, or offer your own ideas.

Concrete Tasks

There are several small and large changes/additions that we have already identified as important to this project. If you're looking for something to do to get you started with the codebase, you might consider working on one of these tasks. If you've got questions about these tasks, want to suggest other tasks, or want to start working on a task listed here, check out this page on how to get started as a developer on this project.

Note: With the 1.2 release finished, we're starting to look at what has to happen for a 2.0 release. This will involve a lot of work, but the task list isn't ready yet. For the time being, all that's left here are the few things that didn't get picked up for the 1.2 release. If you're interested in what else needs to get done, or if you have specific things you'd like to see happen in 2.0, please let us know!

• The three optional XPath functions are the only standard functions not supported in the current codebase. Support for these functions should be added in such a way that it's easy to remove/replace different implementations that use different XPath libraries.
• The Target interface should be cleaned up so it's easier to work with the TargetMatch objects.

Abstract Tasks

• Performance. No one has taken a long, hard look at how to optimize any of the performance issues in the code. There are undoubtedly a lot of obvious and not-so-obvious tasks available here. Working on performance tuning as well as performance analysis would be very helpful.
• Protocol Design. There have been some discussions about the online protocols that are used to talk between a PDP and PEP, about potential protocols to talk to a PEP, about how the PDP communicates with outside sources, etc. Working on prototypes or within some standards bodies, it would be useful to start fleshing out some of these protocols, which might be XML-based or might have some tighter representation (like a simple binary protocol for talking to a PEP from a constrained device). Note that some work has been done with SAML, and and SAML 2.0 will probably include some standard ways to query an online PDP. Mail us if you want to know more.
• Working With Existing Systems. Part of what will make XACML really powerful is interoperating with other standards. Work is already underway to define how policies are stored in LDAP, attributes are shared using SAML, etc. Working on specifications or prototyping code to connect XACML and other related standards will be a very important task.
• Management. People will have to work with XACML policies, both writing them and then managing them. Good tools and interfaces are needed to make XACML a success. We would welcome your thoughts and experiences in this space. This is one of the next big projects that will be starting here soon.

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