There is a project underway, JBoss Identity (https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBID), that aims to provide common identity management support across many JBoss projects/products. According to the project leader's blog (http://anil-identity.blogspot.com/2008/12/federated-identity-support-with-jboss.html), JBoss Application Server, JBoss Portal, JBoss SOA, JBoss Rules/Drools, and JBoss Seam are all on board with this approach. We should see if it makes sense for us to jump on the bandwagon.

The end goal of using the JBoss Identity stuff would be to replace the custom membership domain provider for authentication, and also to leverage it to provide SAML-based authorization for (ideally fine grained) access to Federate virtual databases.

SAML-based authorization has been a frequent request by prospects/customers for the closed source MetaMatrix product that is an ancestor to Federate.

I'm deliberately logging this one in the Federate project rather than the JBEDSP product JIRA since JBoss Identity itself is also still in project-only status.