» Introduction.

» What Is the Stibium Server ?

• Stibium provides Naming and Directory Services.
• These are accessible via XML Web Services.
• Stibium uses XML storage.
• Stibium supports the Java JNDI.

» What Is Stibium, ctd ?

• The Stibium web application runs under the Apache Tomcat web server.
• Clients make class to Stibium using SOAP web services via http or https.
• Stibium stores and serves named bindings and their attributes.

» What Is a 'Naming Service' ?

• The role of a naming service is to resolve names - map names onto the corresponding resources, or their attributes.
• The association of a name with a value is called a binding.
• For example, software agents can use naming services to 'advertise' themselves.

» What are SOAP XML Web Services ?

• A 'remoting' mechanism.
• Function calls can be made between computers using standard web protocols.
• Data is encoded textually - xml using SOAP.
• Gives system and platform level interoperability.

» Stibium and the Java JNDI.

• JNDI - The Java Naming and Directory Interfaces framework.
  - The framework defines standardised APIs.
• Stibium has a JNDI Service Provider.
• The javax.naming.directory.DirContext interface is supported by the Stibium service provider.

» Stibium Contexts and Bindings.

• Data is stored within contexts - these are analagous to file-system directories.
• A context contains bindings, these may be items of data, or nested sub-contexts.
• Stibium supports hierarchical naming, using simple 'dot-separated left-to-right' strings.

» An example of a Stibium 'Name'.

• Grid.AgentConfig.MemLogLimit
• This might be the maximum number of entries allowed for 'In Memory' loggers in distributed software agents.

» The Stibium Persistence Model.

• Bindings can be stored by Stibium in either 'transient' or 'persistent' mode.
• Transient items are only stored in-memory.
• Persistent items are also stored in the xml persistence document on the file-system.

» The Stibium Persistence Document.

• This is a single logical xml document.
• The document contains xml elements which represent contexts and bindings.
• Context elements can contain: bindings, environment entries and attributes.

» The Stibium Security Model.

• Stibium can be accessed using either http, or https for secure communications.
• Stibium also includes a cryptographic client-authentication mechanism.
• Permissions granted to clients determine which data they can access.