Rampart 2 - A High Performance Security Module for Apache Axis2

Apache Rampart is the security module of Apache Axis2. Even though it supports almost all the WS-Sec* specifications and highly interoperable it has some performance issues due to two issues.

1.) Rampart uses DOM as it is built on top of WSS4J/XMLSec. So for security processing it does a DOOM conversion before pass the message to WSS4J/XML Sec.
2.) Rampart uses the two phase validation model. This makes it does extra work in the case if the message violates the policy as that only found in the second phase.

Four students of University of Moratuwa, Saliya Ekanayake, Isuru Suriarachchi, Sameera Jayasoma and Kalani Ruwanpathirana took the tough challenge of reimplementing the complete XML Security and SOAP Security layers on top of AXIOM as their final year project and successfully implemented and tested Apache Rampart 2. They have already contributed their Axiom based C14N to Apache and hope they will contribute the rest of their work too.

Isuru has written an article about the the processing model they used in Rampart 2 and it describes the advantages of making the WS Security validation policy aware.

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