Table of Contents 

Executive Summary

This report describes the maintenance carried out for the database on Identity Management Systems (IMS) in the context of FIDIS deliverable D3.15. In the forth project period (April 2007 to March 2008), which is covered by this report, the maintenance work mainly contained:  

1. Quality assurance carried out by ICPP leading to updates of 26 records 

2. Adding of 6 additional records (the database contained 44 records by end of April 2008) 

3. Further development directed towards a simplified editing front end in preparation of content management functions; in this context technical problems arose that will be solved by September 2008 in the context of the maintenance work carried out by FIDIS WP1.. 

The database is publicly available via http://imsdb.fidis.net.

The task of setting up the new content management infrastructure for the database content could not been carried out in time, due to infrastructural problems. For this reason this document is an interim report. The complete implementation will be reported in an additional report by end of September 2008 (end of the planning period of the 4th work plan).

For more then three years now the content of the IMS database is developing. The changes made in the database seem to follow certain trends. Obvious trends can be observed in: 

1. Concentration of products and vendors as well in the sector of type 1 IMS as type 3 IMS.  

2. Increasing importance of social networks and related search engines 

3. Increasing number of hybrid types of IMS; in this light a revision of the typology of IMS suggested in the FIDIS Deliverable D3.1 might be useful 

These trends will be further analysed in the context of FIDIS Deliverable D3.17, which is planned for the 5th Work Plan.

Quality Assurance Measures and additional Content

Quality Assurance carried out by the editing team

Due to the fact that further input by vendors and users became not available as originally planned (see chapter for further information), updating and editorial work was carried out by the editing team at ICPP. In this context, 26 database records were updated. This covered mainly:

1. Version and status information of the IMS 

2. External links 

3. Comments 

A detailed list can be found in Annex 1 (chapter ).

In addition, 6 new database records were added. These entries mainly cover social networks, as they became increasingly important in the domain of identity management systems. A detailed list of the new IMS covered can be found in Annex 2 (chapter ).

Currently the IMS database contains a total of 44 records of different types of IMS. The database is publicly available via http://imsdb.fidis.net.

For a permanent maintenance structure of the IMS database a content management system is planned. This should support editing of existing records by vendors or users and the creation of new records. As authentication of vendors and quality of content may be a problem, an editorial check of the content by ICPP is planned. The editing interface needs to support a corresponding workflow to facilitate checking, approving and deployment of new content. The specification of these functionalities is documented in the FIDIS Deliverable D3.11.  

The current version of the FIDIS Communication Infrastructure (FCI) based on Typo3 (currently Version 4.2.0) supports these functionalities. Unfortunately an update of the web server is required, due to the fact that the script language PHP 5 is needed. Unfortunately, the web-hosting provider of the FIDIS web server did not fulfil these requirements.  

For this (and other) reasons, a change of the web-hosting provider together with an update of the server platform was planned for April 2008. The update includes the needed PHP-Version. Once this update has been carried out successfully, the implementation of the content management interfaces and workflows will be carried out. 

As the needed infrastructure was not available in time, the task of setting up the new content management infrastructure for the database could not been carried out in time. For this reason this document is an interim report only. The complete implementation will be reported in an additional report by end of September 2008 (end of the planning period of the 4th work plan).

Future Plans for the Maintenance and Use

For more than three years now the content of the IMS database is developing. The changes made in the database seem to follow certain trends. Trends that can be observed include: 

1. Further Concentration of products and vendors as well in the sector of type 1 IMS as type 3 IMS.  

2. Increasing importance of social networks and related search engines 

3. Increasing number of hybrid types of IMS; in this light a revision of the typology of IMS suggested in the FIDIS Deliverable D3.1 might be useful 

These trends will be analysed in the FIDIS Deliverable D3.17 planned in the context of the 5th work plan. One part of the work planned there will be the discussion of a new typology that takes hybrid types of IMS according to the typology developed in the FIDIS Deliverable D3.1 into consideration. The work of this deliverable also will cover the maintenance work needed for the IMS database.