Supporting Accepted Business Practices
on the Network (SABER)
Global Operating System
Technology Group
High Performance Computing and
Communications Division
Information Sciences Institute
University of Southern California
Objective
The objectives of the SABER project are to establish a framework for
network applications and protocols that support automatic adherence to
accepted business practices. Making such practices automatic means
that conscious effort is needed to circumvent the practice and allows
social mechanisms to be applied when such actions are discovered. The
framework will support intellectual property and privacy protection.
It will support the selection of information and service providers
based on class of content and confidence in the service provider (e.g.
accreditation). It will also support prioritization and filtering of
service requests according to declared class of service.
Approach
Meta-data containing copyright clearance information, price,
confidence, ratings, and purpose are encoded as attributes to data
objects, and fields to pass the declared class of service, ratings,
and desired restraints on the retention of transaction information are
added to transport protocol messages. Endorsements for services are
signed certificates that are stored as attributes of the service in
directory service entries. Attributes on data objects are preserved
when data are cached or otherwise copied.
Applications use the meta-data to initiate payments for intellectual
property (possibly prompting the user for approval first), and to
prioritize or hide from view inappropriate information, services of
unknown quality, and objectionable material. Servers receiving
requests with limits on collection and retention of summary
information act within the constraints imposed by the user or they
reject the request.