[Community] Identity Relationship Service

[Bavo De Ridder]

Hi,

I was wondering if someone is working on or knows something about "Identity
Relationship Services". Let me clarify this a little.

First of all, I am talking in an enterprise and B2B context. The idea is
that different parties have relationships between each other. Parties range
from individuals to organizations, their departments ... Even relationships
can be a party in another relationship.

*Examples

*Below are some examples of relationships.*
*

   1. John is an employee of Acme Corp. This is the relationship
   "employee - employer".
   2. Data Corp is a business partner of Acme Corp. This is the
   relationship "business partner".
   3. Jane is an employee of Data Corp. This is the relationship
   "employee - employer" (same as for John).
   4. Data Corp participates in the business process "Sell Acme Product"
   of Acme Corp. This is the relationship between the relationship "business
   partner" (between Data Corp and Acme Corp) and Data Corp.
   5. Jane is a customer of Acme Corp This is the relationship "Acme
   customer".

Example 4 shows that relationships can be participants in other
relationships. Also note that some of these relationships can be modeled
differently depending on what the relationships will be used for.

*The Service?*

I would like to have a service I can use to answer the following questions:

   1. What are the (in)direct relationships between Jane and Acme Corp?
   That would return information about Jane as an employee of Data Corp who is
   a business partner of Acme Corp (a relationship path). The second part of
   the answer would return information about Jane as a customer of Acme Corp.
   2. Who are the participants in a "business partner" relationship with
   Acme Corp?
   3. ...

The service should allow a great deal of extensibility, as for instance
given by the Liberty Data Services and accompanying Profiles. Party and
relationship definitions can not all be defined up front.

*What is it used for?*

Almost any enterprise has many of these participants and relationships. Most
of these relationships are even actively managed although not in the context
of Identity. If you could query these relationships, they would prove very
valuable input for:

   - Authorization decisions
   - Personalization
   - Consistent view of identities
   - Enrich authentication when a party has two or more different
   relationship paths to your enterprise. You can limit the authentication to a
   specific set of relationships.
   - Users could allow or deny certain relationships to be made,
   protecting their privacy (I even dare to say "user centric")


All this might already exist, my point of view might be limited ... So any
input, ideas, remarks, pointers ... would be greatly appreciated.

-- 
=bavo.de.ridder (http://xri.net/=bavo.de.ridder)
Visit me at http://xri.net/=bavo.de.ridder/(+home)
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