The Liberty Alliance Project on Friday unveiled the public draft release of a framework for identity-based web services.
 
The latest release of ID-WSF 2.0 is the first of three that will each add greater depth to the identity-management framework. The final specification including all three releases is expected to be available by end of the year.

Phase one extends ID-WSF 2.0 to include support for SAML 2.0 from the Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Sciences, an international standards body. SAML, or security assertions markup language, defines a framework for communicating security and identity information between computer systems. SAML defines the frame in extensible markup language.

SAML 2.0 support in ID-WSF 2.0 reflects the alliance's strategy of integrating open standards in its specifications to help drive a convergence of identity standards, the group said.

The Liberty Alliance is developing specifications for carrying user authentication across multiple web services, so a person would only need to use a single user ID and password to access multiple services, which are offered by a company and its partners.

The alliance has more than 150 members, including companies, non-profit and government organizations. Members from the high-tech industry include Computer Associates International Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Nokia Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc.