[Geoserver-devel] Proposing a new layer group type (why make do with 4 when you can have 5?)

Hi,
it turns out the layer group security proposal at https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/GSIP-152
improves the situation vs layer group security, it still fails to address some use cases.

The use case in particular would be to have certain layers that are only accessible via an
opaque layer group, but not by themselves, for certain users (fixed basemap approach)
while for other users they are actually available via other other layer groups exposing them.

I’ve been thinking about it and the simplest approach I can think to also match this requirement
is to introduce a new type of layer group that would be an opaque container… it would be useful
both in non secured environments, and paired with security:

  • When used without security, it would implicitly make the layers contained in it non advertised, as they would not appear anymore in the capabilities document (unlike the existing SINGLE mode, which acts as an alias but still leaves layers visible top level in the caps document). This is a common situation that we missed a handy setup for (right now one has to go and make each and every layer non advertised by hand). Mind, this does not replace “non advertised”, there are other legit uses of it, like a top level layer that is the result of a computation and might be available only temporarily.
  • When used with security, it would allow expansion of the layer from the group in GetMap, but not allow access to the layer directly
    In order to implement the latter the ResourceAccessManager interface would be extended with a method

that takes a layer group and returns the layers the RAM wants to allow access to, instead of having
SecureCatalogImpl just loop the contained layers one by one in isolation and authorize them directly.
The new method would of course have a default implementation to make sure the interface is not broken.

Two questions:

  • Is there any objection?
  • Should I make a separate GSIP for this?
    Cheers

Andrea

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Andrea,

- No objection, that sounds like a great idea to me.

- Yes to a new GSIP; the old one is already accepted. The new GSIP could include some descriptive text from the old one as GSIPs make great interim documentation (GSIP-152 being particularly good in my opinion). If all 5 types were summarised together that would be great.

Kind regards,
Ben.

On 16/12/16 00:17, Andrea Aime wrote:

Hi,
it turns out the layer group security proposal at
https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/GSIP-152
improves the situation vs layer group security, it still fails to address
some use cases.

The use case in particular would be to have certain layers that are only
accessible via an
opaque layer group, but not by themselves, for certain users (fixed basemap
approach)
while for other users they are actually available via other other layer
groups exposing them.

I've been thinking about it and the simplest approach I can think to also
match this requirement
is to introduce a new type of layer group that would be an opaque
container... it would be useful
both in non secured environments, and paired with security:

   - When used without security, it would implicitly make the layers
   contained in it non advertised, as they would not appear anymore in the
   capabilities document (unlike the existing SINGLE mode, which acts as an
   alias but still leaves layers visible top level in the caps document). This
   is a common situation that we missed a handy setup for (right now one has
   to go and make each and every layer non advertised by hand). Mind, this
   does not replace "non advertised", there are other legit uses of it, like a
   top level layer that is the result of a computation and might be available
   only temporarily.
   - When used with security, it would allow expansion of the layer from
   the group in GetMap, but not allow access to the layer directly

In order to implement the latter the ResourceAccessManager interface would
be extended with a method
that takes a layer group and returns the layers the RAM wants to allow
access to, instead of having
SecureCatalogImpl just loop the contained layers one by one in isolation
and authorize them directly.
The new method would of course have a default implementation to make sure
the interface is not broken.

Two questions:

   - Is there any objection?
   - Should I make a separate GSIP for this?

Cheers
Andrea

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