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Currently i'm working in a on-line payment company, i need to implement a access control system. I used XACML for experimental purpose 2 years ago, and used it in a management system(based on Balana's XACML implementation). I noticed XACML Version 3 specification hasn't been updated since Jan 2013, i wonder whether this specification is still under maintenance. If not, does anyone know any alternative?
What David says is correct. In addition, the OASIS XACML Technical Committee (TC) has just voted to hold a public review of Errata for XACML 3.0. The review should start within a few days. The corrections are minor, but it does show we are maintaining the documents and getting input from the field.
Although no one is currently working on them, there are several unfinished Profiles I would like to see completed. One is to extend the JSON format for XACML to cover the policy language. It currently only covers only the decision request protocol. Another is the ALFA policy language which is a more user friendly, JSON-like language originally developed by Axiomatics, and endorsed by the TC.
For people who want to use XACML, in addition to several excellent commercial products, there are at least two other open source implementations in addition the the WS02 - Balana one mentioned above. Forgerock has one and there is another originally developed in house at ATT. The later one was contributed to the Apache Incubator, but failed to gain traction and was mothballed. However the original code is still freely available under Apache license.
Finally I should mention that I have proposed various ways to integrate XACML with token-based authorization schemes such as OAuth. However this has not gone past the research stage.
Yes, XACML is still very much active. The standard, in version 3, is mature and right now no one is working on XACML 4.0. Given XACML 3.0 is a standard, there won't be changes made to 3.0. Either we go to 3.1 or 4.0. There are enhancements we are thinking of for a 4.0 version but this is not the focus for now.
The focus is on profiles, both technical profiles (such as the JSON profile of XACML) and business profiles (such as the Export Control profile of XACML).
Disclaimer: I work for Axiomatics, the leading XACML implementation. I am also a member of the XACML Technical Committee.
We see more and more requests for Attribute Based Access Control and XACML in the marketplace especially in financial and healthcare
I'm curious to know some more details about the various SQL standard's, i.e. SQL-92, SQL:99, SQL:2003, SQL:2008 etc. There is a short and useful overview on Wikipedia, with links to very expensive documents. Why are those documents not open to public? Can I find some open and free information?
Please, don't post links you found from Google. I'm interested in somewhat authoritative documentation only.
Quoting from one of my web sites:
We all love open source software. Wouldn’t it be great if
international standard documents such as the SQL standard would be
open too?
As a matter of fact: they are!
However, they are not free—just public. Very much like open source
software is not necessarily free. Too often, we neglect these
differences. Just because we have to pay for the standard doesn't mean
it is secret.
A download of the most relevant part of the SQL standard—part 2—is
available for USD 60 at ANSI. A CD with all parts on it can be bought
from ISO for CHF 352. Not free, but affordable.
You mentioned in some comments that you are mostly interested in part 2, so spending USD 60 might be your best option.
If you just need to know about the syntax up to 2003, there are two great free resources:
BNF grammar of SQL-92, SQL:1999 and SQL:2003: http://www.savage.net.au/SQL/
Online validator for SQL:1999: https://developer.mimer.com/services/sql-validator-99/
Finally, the complete text of “SQL-99 Complete, Really” is available at the MariaDB knowledge base. However, this book was written in 1999 when no database actually supported the described features. Keep that in mind when using this resource.
Other answers also mentioned "free" copies of the standards available on the web. Yes there are—those are mostly draft versions. I can't tell which of them are legal, so I rather not link them.
Finally a little self ad: I've just launched http://modern-sql.com/ to explain the standard in an easily accessible way to developers. Note that the actual standards text is written like laws are written :) Depending on your background, that might anyway not what you want.
The Postgresql Developer FAQ maintains links to each of them:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Developer_FAQ#Where_can_I_get_a_copy_of_the_SQL_standards.3F
There are some hyperlinked versions of 92, 99 and 2003 here
However, I've never been able to use them effectively (read: I gave up).
This 92 text is useful (and is quoted here on SO several times)
ISO/IEC 9075-1:2011 -- google that.
Actually, digging around I found
http://www.incits.org/standards-information/
and it has freely availble section that clicks to something that redirects to here:
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html
And finally the standards.
You have to accept a license agreement to download a pdf.
However, from what I have read in my pursuit - the RDMS well the 'RD' part is going the way of the dinosaur.. If you are building something new (therefore want the new standards) you may want to reconsider all options.
You don't have to pay for all of the standards. SQL-92 is freely available, for instance.
Manning is running a special on "NHibernate in Action" for $10. NHibernate In Action was released in February 2009 for V1.2 of NHibernate. Currently, NHibernate is up to V2.1. Will the book about V1.2 be relevant enough to apply towards the current release of NHibernate. I don't want to waste my time and money on a book about deprecated or irrelevant features.
I'm a complete NHibernate noob, but I'm not a stranger to the general concept of ORM's.
Update:
I did buy the book, and from the small amount that I've read the V2.x series was in beta when the book was released. The book's authors do point out some of the differences in configuration between 1.x and 2.x. From what I've read so far, I recommend this book to anyone wanting a book about NHibernate.
Yes, it will still be relevant. You can find core definitions about ORM systems in it.
Also there are a lot of examples about mapping and solving common problems like inheritance mapping, collections mapping, caching, etc.
After some digging I found this post, which linked to this blog, which actually gave a few bits of detail on NH2.1 but no sales pitch. This is the main problem NHibernate has in my view - they don't go for selling themselves in a big way but like to "keep it in the family", you have to dig through developer's blogs.
Anyway the release notes is where you're told to look. releasenotes.txt contains the entire history and here's some pickings from 2.0 and 2.1:
.NET 1.1 is no longer supported
Nullables.NHibernate is no longer supported (use nullable types of .NET 2.0)
NHibernate.Expression namespace was renamed to NHibernate.Criterion
<nhibernate> section, in App.config, is no longer supported and will be ignored. Configuration schema for configuration file and App.config is now identical, and the App.config section name is:
<hibernate-configuration> have a different schema and all properties names are cheked
configuration properties are no longer prefixed by "hibernate.", if before you would specify "hibernate.dialect", now you specify just "dialect"
NHibernate will return long for count(*) queries on SQL Server
Various classes were moved between namespaces
Various classes have been renamed (to match Hibernate 3.2 names)
AutoFlush will not occur outside a transaction - Database transactions are never optional all communication with the database must occur inside a transaction, whatever you read or write data. (This one may affect what you read in the book, see this question)
case when...then...else...end in select clause
There are around a hundred others but nothing that will affect you if you're not trying to upgrade from 1.2 to 2.1.
I've just bought the book, and am finding it very useful and relevant. Much of the important stuff is conceptual anyway. My bigger gripe is the fact that I'm using fluent nhibernate, so lots of the xml and attribute mapping and config stuff in the book is not so relevant to me.
i know nothing about medical records but im sure there's great opportunity in it now.
im planning to either find software that manages records or build my own.
if i do build my own, can someone recommend a platform to use? i prefer vb.net. is there anything better for this?
if you do not recommend me to build my own medical records keeping software, please recommend something that is already existent. is that opensource openEMR any good?
i am planning to start some kind of system as a DEMO for a small doctor's office.
I work in the medical industry as an EDI developer. If you "know nothing about it" as you say, I would recommend strongly against trying to create your own. Even beginning to understand all the nuances surrounding the medical field, all the related laws at local, state and federal levels, the variations between how the exact same "standards" are applied across the various segments of the industry and so forth, can take years or longer.
For instance, there are defined standards, but every state government has their own set of "variations" and exceptions and custom rules, and even across segments in the same state things are not handled the same way (i.e. Medicaid, Medicare, HMOs, TPAs, MCOs and so forth can all have different, and often contradictory, regulations that they have to follow within the same state.
Add to that the fact that regulations change on an ongoing basis and, if the federal government gets its way, things are going to change drastically across the board in coming years.
For a developer, the medical field can be one of the most complex
If you want to pursue this, I would recommend taking on a couple of partners, specifically people with extensive skills and backgrounds as business systems analysts in the medical field to guide you and making extensive use of existing tools as a base and, at least at first, focusing on a very specific segment to start with to build up your experience and background.
As for tools, any of the .NET tools are excellent, though I would recommend C# over VB if you can. There's a broader support for C# in third party tools and apps. In addition to some of the tools others have mentioned, I would also add that you will need mapping software, such as Altova's MapForce. This will aid substantially in your ability to transfer records between entities and between formats and mapforce includes the ability to export the map you design as a C# based .dll you can add to your own home grown apps.
There are existing standards (for example, HL7), which vary somewhat from continent to continent (e.g. North America not necessarily using the same standards as Europe), and vendors' implementations of those standards.
If you want a sledgehammer, the the US Veterans Administrations software is open source, and I thought well regarded (or so I read years ago).
You might want to tell us what scale you are looking for, a one doc office, or a hospital chain?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
If you're pretty new to this, and don't know too much about it, building your own would not be a good idea. As BBlake said, it can take years to learn everything you'd need to know. There are a few different types of software you can use. One such medical software is AdvancedMD. You may want to try them or just look around elsewhere. Good luck!
Also see the Practice Fusion tool.
I read about them a bit ago here: http://healthcare.zdnet.com/?p=2522
There may be better opportunities in supporting an existing open source medical services app than in creating a new one.
In Canada, OSCAR is a well-regarded open source medical admin application. You can find a list of other such programs, mainly American, at Sourceforge.
There are about 2000 medical record vendors. I do not know a lot about costs, markups price points in the market but I will say that the software is usually phenomenally expensive. It seems to be based on "what the market can bear". Almost every package I have used looks completely amateur compared to software in almost any other category I have used. It maybe that the market is quite small when it is divided by 2000 vendors.
Most database software and general business software would do the job quite well but there are peculiarities to medicine such as HIPAA.
One of the most intelligent pieces of medical software that I have seen (at least for documenting evaluation and management encoutners) is Praxis. You have to be a doctor who is in practice to realize how genius it is. Disclaimer: I have not used it but wish I could.
Penultimately, for medical software to work the patient has to have a portal into it so that they can update, or bring attention to, mistakes.
Finally, all medical software is fantastic when demonstrated. One only knows its flaws when one uses it on every patient for about 6 weeks.
surely build your own software
i work with vb.net and i started developing my own healthcare applications since 2006
it was hard in the beginning, but now, man.. the sky is the limit
building your own apps will help you add or modify features with extreme ease
good luck
if you need any help just comment on my answer and ask your question, i will respond asap
There are a couple of questions on Stackoverflow asking whether x (Ruby / Drupal) technology is 'enterprise ready'.
I would like to ask how is 'enterprise ready' defined.
Has anyone created their own checklist?
Does anyone have a benchmark that they test against?
"Enterprise Ready" for the most part means can we run it reliably and effectively within a large organisation.
There are several factors involved:
Is it reliable?
Can our current staff support it, or do we need specialists?
Can it fit in with our established security model?
Can deployments be done with our automated tools?
How easy is it to administer? Can the business users do it or do we need a specialist?
If it uses a database, is it our standard DB, or do we need to train up more specialists?
Depending on how important the system is to the business the following question might also apply:
Can it be made highly available?
Can it be load balanced?
Is it secure enough?
Open Source projects often do not pay enough attention to the difficulties of deploying and running software within a large organisation. e.g. Most OS projects default to MySql as the database, which is a good and sensible choice for most small projects, however, if your Enterprise has an ORACLE site license and a team of highly skilled ORACLE DBAs in place the MySql option looks distinctly unattractive.
To be short:
"Enterprise ready" means: If it crashes, the enterprises using it will possibly sue you.
Most of the time the "test", if it may really be called as such, is that some enterprise (=large business), has deployed a successful and stable product using it. So its more like saying its proven its worth on the battlefield, or something like that. In other words the framework has been used successfully, or not in the real world, you can't just follow some checklist and load tests and say its enterprise ready.
Like Robert Gould says in his answer, it's "Enterprise-ready" when it's been proven by some other huge project. I'd put it this way: if somebody out there has made millions of dollars with it and gotten written up by venture capitalist magazines as the year's (some year, not necessarily this one) hottest new thing, then it's Enterprise-ready. :)
Another way to look at the question is that a tech is Enterprise-ready when a non-tech boss or business owner won't worry about whether or not they've chosen a good platform to run their business on. In this sense Enterprise-ready is a measure of brand recognition rather than technological maturity.
Having built a couple "Enterprise" applications...
Enterprise outside of development means, that if it breaks, someone can fix it. I've worked with employers/contractors that stick with quite possibly the worst managing hosting providers, data vendors, or such because they will fix problems when they crop up, even if they crop up a lot it, and have someone to call when they break.
So to restate it another way, Enterprise software is Enterprisey because it has support options available. A simple example: jQuery isn't enterprisey while ExtJS is, because ExtJS has a corporate support structure to it. (Yes I know these two frameworks is like comparing a toolset to a factory manufactured home kit ).
As my day job is all about enterprise architecture, I believe that the word enterprise isn't nowadays about size nor scale but refers more to how a software product is sold.
For example, Ruby on Rails isn't enterprise because there is no vendor that will come into your shop and do Powerpoint presentations repeatedly for the developer community. Ruby on Rails doesn't have a sales executive that takes me out to the golf course or my favorite restaurant for lunch. Ruby on Rails also isn't deeply covered by industry analyst firms such as Gartner.
Ruby on Rails will never be considered "enterprise" until these things occur...
From my experience, "Enterprise ready" label is an indicator of the fear of managers to adopt an open-source technology, possibly balanced with a desire not to stay follower in that technology.
This may objectively argued with considerations such as support from a third party company or integration in existing development tools.
I suppose an application could be considered "enterprise ready" when it is stable enough that a large company would use it. It would also imply some level of support, so when it does inevitable break.
Wether or not something is "enterprise ready" is entirely subjective, and undefined, and rather "buzz word'y".. Basically, you can't have a test_isEnterpriseReady() - just make your application as reliable and efficient as it can be..