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[higgins-dev] entities, and digital identities

I would like to discuss some terms in the context of Higgins interfaces and classes. At this point I would rather not revisit any of these terms in the sense of the identitygang lexicon, but see if we can reach a common understanding in a more narrow scope of Higgins interfaces and code.

Entity
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I know that "entity" is not in the interfaces or classes and is not modeled directly, but I find it useful (and even necessary) to describe things in the real world and we should be clear about what we consider to be "real" and "things". I think "entity" is the most likely term. Claims, attributes, digital identities, digital subject, and principals all purport to be data about something -- some entity. I think of an "entity" as anything that can be identified in human conversation. This is very close to the identity gang lexicon, except that it would include "concept" in the list with person, physical object, animal, and juridical entity. In fact, I think of a juridical entity as a conceptual entity that incurs legal policy. Also, note that a false assertion is still a concept -- we can identify it and talk about it.

So it is useful to think of an entity as anything that can be identified in human conversation. There is much discussion on the identitygang list that two identities can be identical -- but I think that's because the discussion strays between entities (anything that can be identified) and digital identities (a chunk of data). Of course a particular chunk of data (e.g. a set of attributes) can be insufficient to distinguish between two entities, but humans CAN distinguish between the entities or we could not talk about them. The distinction between entities may be as simple as sequence or physical position, be we can identify them or we could not discuss them.


Digital Identity
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In networked systems we commonly store data about an entity. I think this corresponds most closely with Digital Identity. It consists of a chunk of structured data. At this point I see no difference between the terms attributes, attribute value assertions, and claims when applied to that structured data. Sometimes sets of attributes are stored as an entity within a larger entity (e.g a user account within a directory service). Sometimes a set of attributes are presented as part of some interaction with another entity (e.g. name.password authentication, update address book, present credit card info, etc.). Is this the difference between "digital subject", "digital identity", and "claims" -- merely notions of persistence and larger or smaller subset of attributes? If so, it seems like the higgins interface can have class definitions for digital identity, and attribute, and not (yet) need classes for digital subject, claims, persona, party, etc.

>From what I have seen of the demo code, it seems like a Facet corresponds to a digital identity. Is this where you see it going?

--Dale



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