Introduction to Metasystem Guiding Principles
Recently with all this talk about an Identity System, Iíve spent some time thinking about what the characteristics and benefits of a ìmetaî are in general. I wouldnít consider these characteristics as laws more as guiding principles.
In other words, if youíre in the middle of building a system and it is feeling like a silo, you should consider these principles and see if you canít make a shift in your architecture. Rather than make these principles into ìtechnicalî and ìpoliticalî categories, I name the principle and cover the technical and political issues that are addressed by that principle. The first guiding principle of metaystems is: It must be polymorphic and include current, present and, legacy systems pf its own species where possible. Let me explain what I mean by architecture ìspeciesî here.
Architecture Species
A directory serviceóand an identity serviceóare not of the same species. Thus a Metadirectory does not an Identity Metasystem make. Directory systems are higher up the architecture food chain than Identity Systems. Thus we have been forced to solve the Identity System problem before we can address the Directory problem with any sort of long lasting expectation. Users have more than multiple names in directory, a user has multiple ìidentitiesîóand all that that entails. Some of which is still being sorted out.
As a matter fact identity is so rich and complicated, it has required the development of its own laws and identity system. You canít just pop in a Metadirectory and have it manage identities and your identity infrastructure. Wrong species. More on Metasystem Guidelines later.
