Friday, November 12, 2010

The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus and Access Control Overview

The AppFabric Service Bus connects local, firewalled applications and data with applications in the cloud, rich desktop applications, and smart, Web-enabled devices anywhere in the world.
AppFabric Access Control is a claims-based access control service that can be used on most Web-enabled devices to build interoperable, federated authentication and authorization into any connected application.
High-level diagram of Access Control

Service Bus Features


  • Securely exposes to external callers Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)-based Web services that are running behind firewalls and NAT routers -- without requiring you to open any inbound ports or otherwise change firewall and router configurations.
  • Enables secure inbound communication from devices outside the firewall.
  • Provides a global namespace system that is location-independent: the name of a service in the AppFabric Service Bus provides no information about the final destination of the communication.
  • Provides a service registry for publishing and discovering service endpoint references in a service namespace.
  • Builds and hosts service endpoints that support:

    • Exposing a Web service to remote users. Expose and secure a local Web service in the cloud without managing any firewall or NAT settings.
    • Eventing behavior. Listen for notifications on any device, anywhere in the world.
    • Tunneling between any two endpoints to enable bidirectional streams.
The following diagram illustrates the capabilities of the Service Bus.
High-level conceptual graphic for Service Bus

Access Control Features

The AppFabric Access Control service provides claims-based authentication and authorization for REST Web services.
  • Usable from any platform.
  • Low friction way to onboard new clients.
  • Integrates with AD FS v2.
  • Implements OAuth Web Resource Authorization Protocol (WRAP)and Simple Web Tokens (SWT).
  • Enables simple delegation.
  • Trusted as an identity provider by the AppFabric Service Bus.
  • Extensible to provide integration with any identity provider.

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