Some Thoughts on IdM, SSO, SAML and CAS

We are having a hot summer time here, so sharing clever thoughts has become challenging for me. Nevertheless, I would like to write some words here, in short: "Identity Management".

Based on my last experience from diving into the world of unknown, or in other words: "the experience from hardening my knowledge base", I'm starting to redefine my learning principles. Earlier I had an opinion that the best, yet structured, way to learn something big and new is to find a new book (bible) and just to read it from cover to cover. And only after such a hard reading, with hands-on exercises, one could be able to form some conclusions and feel more comfortable in that new area.

I followed this path last time as well and I have read the whole book: "Identity Management: Concepts, Technologies, and Systems".

And ... I don't feel much more clever now :)

The fact is, the book offers an in-depth understanding of how to design, deploy and assess identity management solutions. It provides a comprehensive overview of current trends and future directions in identity management, including best practices, the standardization landscape, and the latest research finding.

But this book is to much theoretical and overly one-concept-oriented. Note that reading this book sooner or later you will punch the head against the wall called: "SAML" :)

I'm not saying that SAML is bad or even that it is not worth reading about, etc, I'm just saying that the book, the concept of IdM, has to narrow description (you could learn even more about SAML from wikipedia and its references).

I'm just asking myself silently, where are more chapters about SSO, IdM solutions, protocols, e.g.: CAS, JOSSO, Athens, OpenAM? ;)

After finishing this book I was still hungry for knowledge about the IdM (especially about the SSO solutions), so I went googling for more. I was more than happy about the results finally. I have found plenty of articles about CAS usage and what is more interesting, I have come across the "CAS and APEX integration" tutorial.

I have done the whole example and I must say that CAS integrates smoothly with APEX. Moreover the author gives more good advices for APEX, open web solutions, hardening, e.g. using ModSecurity.

Resume:
Never stop searching :) and nevertheless the bad experience from the last book, next time I will try to
search for better "bible" ;)

P.S. If you can do something with APEX smoothly (in this case CAS integration) you will be able to do it with Java and so on.

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Even the Content Has the Strategy

I read Janus Boye's blog regularly (BTW he is a very good writer)  and I have recently come across an interesting article "10 European content strategists to watch" which made me interested in "Content Strategy" and I have decided to read a recommended book there "Content Strategy for the Web".

After reading this book, I don't feel like an expert on "Content Strategy" but I will try to introduce this concept for you in short sentences.

Thus, the best way to start a clever explanation of the subject is to use Wikipedia-based sentences.
So, Wiki says: .... Content Strategy is "the practice of planning the content creation, delivery, and governance" and "a repeatable system that defines the entire editorial content development process for a website development project."

It would be clever enough to stop here, after a few words "... content creation, delivery and governance" ;) but if you are still interested in this topic and don't have time to study the whole book, you could only read a short article called "The Discipline of Content Strategy" written by the same author.

Still hungry for getting to know the Content Strategy?
OK, you could go and read the whole book, it is really worth reading. The language is simple and yet the author has this cosy humour. The only minor disadvantage which I have found there is missing chapter numbers (I like mapping logical structure and it is easier to do it with logical numbers).

During the journey into the knowledge world of content strategy, please note the main steps for the Content Strategy process:

• Audit (What content do we have?; Is it useful?), 
• Analysis (Objectives, assumptions, risks, success factors)
• Strategy (
• What content do we need to create? Why? 
• How will the content be structured?
• How will users find the content?
• How will we get from here to launch?
• What's next once the content is "out there"?).

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Short Book Review: Getting Started with Oracle BPM Suite 11g R1

Having prepared my 'mind organizing platform', I have shifted to the first practical challenge with a template of the mind map called: 'Reading journals'.

The book that I have had in my restless mind for a long time was Getting Started With Oracle BPM Suite 11g R1: A Hands-On Tutorial. I came it across accidentally while I was searching for the pre-installed Oracle BPM virtual box.
Moreover, I could also recommend this Oracle URL as a valuable starting point to the world of Oracle BPM. After completing the whole hands-on tutorial in that book on pre-installed virtual box, I can state now that you would deservedly feel as a marine that has just returned home from a lonely yet simple journey.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post I have 'packed' the whole book with XMind. And I must agree that it has fully confirmed my expectations. Below you can see the snapshot of the result (the snatch of my mind map from this reading).

As a short summary I will give some points about the following:

Disadvantages

• The beginning of this book (especially the first three chapters) are full of sentences that sound like: 'Oracle solutions are the best so … '. Sorry, I don't like such sentences. Based on the content of the book, it is I think dedicated to IT specialists rather than to sales representatives, so, such sentences are worthless.

Advantages

• It provides a short introduction to the major concepts of BPM
• Consistent hands-on tutorial is examined throughout the whole book
• There are many 'print screens' so you will not miss your way along that simple tutorial
• Don't worry in case you are not sure about the result of the tutorial because the same example has already been completed on the Oracle BPM virtual box
• It covers not only the BPM implementation along SOA platform but BAM and Business Rules usage as well

Least but not last, if you are still not sure where to BPEL and/or BPMN put in your SOA stack, you can get more information about that here.

Disclaimer: I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Book recommendation: "Even Faster Websites"

This is the second book for the "Web Sites Performance" that I have read after finishing "High Performance Web Sites". This second edition (the second part by the same author) offers additional rules for speeding up the loading of a web page and responsiveness. Even Faster Web Sites presents 15 more rules that the author Steve Souders has developed from his work as a web operations manager at Yahoo! and Google. This book is completely practical and easy to understand and apply.

After these two books I can start investigating what could be improved with APEX applications performance.
Will see ... ;)

Book recommendation: "High Performance Web Sites"

At this moment I'm not sure about APEX performance but I think that after a few web architecture optimization tasks, it would work faster. But before that, I decided to invest some time into "Web Sites Performance" science and to find out what could be done better within the APEX platform ;)

I've read a very good, yet thin, (only 135 pages) book High Performance Web Sites which demonstrates that 80% of the time takes for a web page to load is due to an inefficient browser activity, and the book provides 14 rules for reducing the response time from 20% to 25%. And here is the 14 optimization rules:

1.Make fewer HTTP requests
2.Use a CDN
3.Add an Expires header
4.Gzip components
5.Put CSS at the top
6.Move JS to the bottom
7.Avoid CSS expressions
8.Make JS & CSS external
9.Reduce DNS lookups
10.Minify JS
11.Avoid redirects
12.Remove duplicate scripts
13.Turn off ETags
14.Make Ajax cachableand small


In my opinion, every APEX or any Web developer should read this. But if you do not have time to read you could at least try this software: YSlow