From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7624df5e57d09688 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-13 14:04:58 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: antonio_duran@hotmail.com (Antonio Duran) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: config files proposal Date: 13 Jun 2002 14:04:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.14.145.57 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1024002298 19816 127.0.0.1 (13 Jun 2002 21:04:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 13 Jun 2002 21:04:58 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:25906 Date: 2002-06-13T21:04:58+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote in message news:... > antonio_duran@hotmail.com (Antonio Duran) writes: > > > Form my point of view, in some cases it could be necessary/interesting > > to keep configuration information confidential and to provide the > > means to check the integrity of a configuration file. > > I'm not clear what you mean by "confidential". Clearly, the > application program that uses the config file must be able to read it. > > If you mean that no other process/person should be able to read it, > that would be up to the operating system. If the OS provides access > controls to files, you can enforce confidentiality. > > I think that issue has to be outside the scope of the Config_Files > API, since it depends heavily on the OS, and we want the Config_Files > API to be OS independent. > > > As for checking the integrity of the config file, that could be done > with an XML DTD and a validating parser. Come to think of it, that is > an advantage of using XML that I had not considered. Although, a > non-XML parser could also check integrity to the same degree. > > Hmm. I'm not clear what you mean by "integrity". XML DTD's allow > specifying what values must be present, and to some extent what type > they are. > > In other situations, "integrity" might mean a version control revision > number, or a checksum, or something similar. What I meant with confidentiality and integrity was to use cryptographic technics to encrypt/decrypt config files for confidentiality and hash/digest for checking integrity. I know this is far beyond the scope since by using that the file couldn't be modified by hand with a simple text editor. My intent was to know if that kind of functionality could be of interest in some circumstances. Antonio Duran