...
3) IBM whole cell parameter estimation (WCPE) challenge: This is not an immediate need, but in discussion about the challenge the use case came of how a 3rd party app could get a user's Synapse principal ID. One way is to give the app the user's session token (or API key, or password), but this is too powerful.
4) Galaxy Integration
Our UCSC contacts mentioned that we might integrate Synapse with Galaxy such that from Galaxy someone can connect to Synapse and retrieve data. UCSC has done similar integration work with Galaxy in the past. http://wiki.galaxyproject.org/Learn/UCSC%20Galaxy%20Integration
Possible Architectures
The following is a survey of identify providers and the protocols/architectures they use to allow third party integration.
| Identity Provideer | Architectural Approach / Protocol | Comments | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenID, OAuth 2.0 | Synapse currently uses OpenID to authenticate with Google. | ||||
OAuth https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/oauth/ | |||||
| AOL | |||||
OAuth | |||||
| Yahoo | OpenID, OAuth, and OpenID-OAuth Hybrid | ||||
| Flickr | Home grown: | The authentication service is similar to that which we have recently added to the portal. Flickr's approach suggests security improvements, e.g. requiring the relying party to use an API key to identify itself. | |||
| Blogger (Google) | OAuth 2.0 https://developers.google.com/blogger/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol#Authorizing |
It seems like the consensus is that OAuth is the way to go.