Sun Delivers Liberty Interoperability Prototype

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(09/27/02, 03:19:01 PM EDT)

Mountain View, Ca. --- Sun Microsystems, Inc., a founding member of the Liberty Alliance which is developing an alternative to the Microsoft online identify model, has made available an interoperability prototype based on the Liberty Alliance Specification (IPL).

This prototype offering is designed for developers -- both enterprise customers and ISV's -- that want to build or test Liberty-enabled applications to manage and maintain their own identity management systems.

Sun IPL is the first open community, Java technology-based implementation of the Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 specification.

This prototype and the Liberty specification are based on open standards such as SAML 1.0, XML and SOAP. Sun IPL is available immediately for download at developer.java.sun.com/developer/codesamples/liberty.html.

Sun has already begun shipping an end-to-end network identity solution that is compliant with the Liberty Alliance version 1.0 specification . It uses a federated model which removes the constraints of a single, centralized architecture such as that proposed by Microsoft, allowing cross-platform information can be stored, managed and distributed easily.

This source code prototype has been designed to be fully interoperable with Sun's own enterprise class identity management offering, the Sun ONE Identity Server 6.0 -- currently available in early access, so any development work completed with Sun IPL can be leveraged. Applications can be seamlessly migrated to the Sun ONE Identity Server 6.0 or any other Liberty-compliant server through API connecters.

The Sun ONE Identity Server 6 leverages industry standards such as SAML 1.0 (Security Assertions Markup Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) as well as providing out-of-the-box support for the new Liberty Alliance Version 1.0 Specification.

For more information, go to www.sun.com.