[Go-essp-tech] resolution on securing opendap aggregations via ESGF

[Gavin M. Bell]

I agree with Estani,

The basic rule of thumb is to NOT put anything more in the catalogs,
this includes CIM information as well as the more recent talk about
access restrictions.

Catalogs can be universally identified with their id. Any ancillary in
formation should be augmented with the datasetids that they reference
and at presentation time or query time we pretty much do a join to pull
in all information referencing the datasetid.  This will limit the
number of of times publishing has to take place.  It also simplifies
other areas of functionality that I have been thinking about.

The only time we should be changing the catalog is if the files they
logically represent change - i.e. something that changes their checksum
values.

IMHO.

On 5/21/11 1:30 AM, Estanislao Gonzalez wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In my opinion we shouldn't encode the access restriction in the catalog 
> for these reasons:
> 1) Changing the access would involved re-publishing the files. (this 
> will be done for instance when QC L2 is reached CMIP5 Research -> CMIP5 
> Commercial). And think about what would happen if we want to change the 
> access restriction in a couple of years... we should publish everything 
> again, and that would involve quite some effort to understand the 
> procedure again...
> 2) I'm not sure of this, but I fear TDS security cannot handle multiple 
> roles. Right now you can publish to as many roles as required, and read 
> and write access is kept separately. This would involve extending the 
> TDS capabilities.
> 3) There could be potential inconsistencies if the authorization service 
> is detached from datanode (like with the gateway right now) and the 
> publisher alters the role but forgets to cascade the changes to the 
> authorizing service (which would proceed according to the last harvested 
> info)
> 4) And last but not least, I'm not sure we want to mix administration 
> with publication. The publisher should only care about making data 
> available, the administrator should organize this and be responsible for 
> the security.
>
> So basically I don't agree :-) Although I do think, if required, we 
> could change "esg-user" for "esgf-controlled" if it's more intuitive.
>
> My 2c anyways,
> Estani
>
> Am 20.05.2011 19:17, schrieb Cinquini, Luca (3880):
>> Hi,
>> 	a few points again on the issue of securing opendap aggregations served by the TDS with ESGF filters:
>>
>> o There's a new release of the ESGF security filters (esg-orp 1.1.2) that maps the TDS request URI to the dataset ID, and should solve this problem. You can experiment with the JPL test TDS server:
>>
>> http://test-datanode.jpl.nasa.gov/thredds/catalog.html
>>
>> where the AIRS dataset (and aggregations) is secured, the MLS is not.
>>
>> o Now the data node authorization filter will correctly identify the aggregation as secured, and call the configured authorization service. Currently, the p2p Node authorization service can be configured to allow authorization based on URL matching, so it will work. The gateway authorization service will have to implement its own logic to establish authorization.
>>
>> o Finally, I am wondering if we shouldn't change the way we encode authorization in thredds catalogs. Right now, we use restrictAccess="esg-user" for ALL collections, but should we consider about encoding the proper required access control attribute instead, for example restrictAccess="CMIP5 Research" ? Something to think about - there are prons and cons about this - it's all a question on wether the access control belongs in the catalog (and can be harvested for searching...) or not.
>>
>> thanks, Luca
>> _______________________________________________
>> GO-ESSP-TECH mailing list
>> GO-ESSP-TECH at ucar.edu
>> http://mailman.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/go-essp-tech
>

-- 
Gavin M. Bell
--

 "Never mistake a clear view for a short distance."
       	       -Paul Saffo


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucar.edu/pipermail/go-essp-tech/attachments/20110523/0cfca6e5/attachment.html