One of the reasons that we are interested in DIX is that it may help our
collaborative products span corporations. Before the BOF next week I
wanted to jot down some use cases that we have so the discussion can see
whether it thinks that these areas lie within the scope of the DIX protocol.
There is a set of collaborative applications that allow a group of
individuals to collaborate privately with each other. They provide a
space where the individuals can post documents, discussions threads,
project milestones, etc.. Access to this space is limited to members of
the space, so the data is not publicly available. Examples of this kind
of software include Microsoft Sharepoint (Team Sites), Lotus Quickplace
and private Wikis.
Typically, the membership of the space is managed by the spaces owner(s)
(business end users) and today this membership list is typically limited
to the employees of the corporation that has deployed the software.
Many corporations however are increasingly seeking the capability to
collaborate with their partners / vendors within these spaces and so
they wish the spaces to be accessible both to their own employees and
the employees of their partners.
Below I outline some typical flows that exist in this type of
application today. These flows are, today, only available to employees
in the intranet. We would like to see whether DIX can enable these
capabilities across the extranet.
1. The space owner adds a new member to the space. The new member is
e-mailed a url link to the space along with a welcome message from the
space owner.
2. Members of the space need to authenticate before being allowed access
to the space. Their id is checked against the list of members allowed
into a particular space.
3. The spaces membership list is available to all members of the space.
This list also makes available the contact details of the members so
that other members can contact them easily. This includes contact
information such as business telephone, e-mail and jabber id.
4. All postings to the space display who made the posting.
5. Members keep track of activity in the space by subscribing to the
space's feed.
Some observations of these requirements and dmd1.
Requirements 2 and 4 are met by dmd1
Requirements 1 and 3 cannot currently be met by dmd1. There's a couple
of interesting point here. Namely that it is the enterprise, not the
individual that makes the decision about whether to release certain
attributes about an individual. It also determines to whom (i.e. which
partners) those attributes can be released. Also, the individuals
contact details needs to be available prior to the individual logging
into the space. As soon as an individual is added to the membership
list their contact information should be available to other members in
the space.
Requirement 5 is not met by dmd1 as "Rich Clients" are presently not in
scope.
Let me know what you think,
Rob
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