The Resource OSID defines a service to access and manage a directory of objects.

Resources

Resources may represent people, places or a set or arbitrary entities that are used throughout the OSIDs as references to indirect objects. In core OSID, Resources have no other meaning other than to provide an identifier and a relation to an authentication principal. Resource Types may define extra data to define an employee, organizational unit or an inventory item.

Resources are referenced throughout the OSIDs to and the abstraction level of this service provides a consistent interface with which to access and manage object references not directly pertinent to the service in play. For example, a Repository OSID may reference Resources as authors or a Course OSID may reference Resources for students and instructors. Each of these OSIDs may orchestrate a Resource OSID to provide management of the set of referenced resources.

A Resource genus Type may be used to provide a label the kind of resource. This service offers the flexibility that the producer of a film may be a person, a production company, or a fire hydrant. While genus Types may be used to constrain the kinds of Resources that may be related to various OsidObjects if necessary , OSID Consumers are expected to simply use the Resource as a reference. If an OSID Consumer wishes to provide a mechanism for updating a Resource referenced, the OSID Consumer should use an orchestrated Resource OSID.

Agents

A Resource also provides the mapping between an authentication Agent and the entity on whose behalf the agent is acting. An Agent can only map to a single Resource while a Resource can have multiple Agents. An agent that represents the unix login of "vijay" on server due.mit.edu can map to a Resource representing Vijay Kumar, who may also have a campus agent of "vkumar@mit.edu."

Group

When a Resource is referenced in another OSID, it is a singular entity. To provide groupings of multiple people or things, a Resource can also be defined as a hierarchical group of other resources. Whether a resource is a single entity or a group is an attribute of the Resource itself. If a Resource is a group, then its membership can be queried or managed in one of the group sessions. This overloading of the object definition serves to keep the nature of the resource separate from the other OSIDs such that a message to a "group", for example, is referenced as a single resource receipient. Other OSIDs are blind to whether or not a referenced Resource is a group or a singular entity..

Resource Relationships

For kicks, Resources may have arbitrrary relationships to other Resources using the ResourceRelationship interface. Resource relationships may also be used to provide a place to describe in more detail, or hang data, on a member to group relationship.

Bin Cataloging

Resources may be mapped into hierarchial Bins for the purpose of cataloging or federation.

Sub Packages

The Resource OSID includes a Resource Demographic OSID for managing dynamically generated populations of Resources and a Resource Batch OSID for managing Resources in bulk.