Architecture for profile translation
Proceedings of the 14th IST Mobile & Wireless Communications Summit, page 1-5. Dresden, Germany, (June 2005)Abstract
User profiles are typically stored locally within proprietary personalisation architectures at service providers. Replicating the same information of the user profile, e.g. email address, across multiple independent service providers decreases consistency of user profiles. Centralising or exchange profile information increases consistency of profiles. Law issues, company policies and proprietary profile structures prevent successful profile exchange between service providers. Existing solutions for centralised profile storage like Microsoft Passport or Liberty Alliance are limited to specific information in the user's profile, e.g. authentication information. This paper presents a profile architecture allowing to keep the user's full profile in the user domain. Service providers access the user profile by defined translations between the service providers profile structure and the user's profile structure. The translations defined are adaptable to reflect modifications in the different profile structures, e.g. Amazon, eBay etc. The concepts developed are especially interesting for facilitating future mobile applications.