Performance assessment of XACML authorizations for Supply Chain Traceability Web Services

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services (WS) offer advanced flexibility and interoperability capabilities. However they imply significant performance overheads that need to be carefully considered. Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Traceability systems are an interesting domain for the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pardal, Miguel L., Harrison, Mark, Sarma, Sanjay Emani, Marques, Jose Alves
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Auto-ID Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87637
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-039X
Description
Summary:Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services (WS) offer advanced flexibility and interoperability capabilities. However they imply significant performance overheads that need to be carefully considered. Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Traceability systems are an interesting domain for the use of WS technologies that are usually deemed to be too complex and unnecessary in practical applications, especially regarding security. This paper presents an externalized security architecture that uses the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) authorization standard to enforce visibility restrictions on trace-ability data in a supply chain where multiple companies collaborate; the performance overheads are assessed by comparing `raw' authorization implementations - Access Control Lists, Tokens, and RDF Assertions - with their XACML-equivalents.