Universal Data Retention Specification Demoed... without Data Integrity Safeguards?

Computerworld reported last week on a new "universal" data retention spec that "divorces data from the applications that created it". While the article doesn't really offer much detail on how the technology actually works, the really interesting omission is any mention of security or control mechanisms in the proposed protocol. Brings to mind an early large-scale XML implementation at a large financial services firm that a ProofSpace staffer worked on in a previous life, where nobody gave access control a moment's thought... and the systems ended up being wide open to anyone who got their hands on the data definitions.

Vendors such as EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Vignette Corp. demoed their software interfaces for the new specification that offers a universal way for users to store and access unchanging or fixed data regardless of the application that created it. The specification, eXtensible Access Method (XAM), was demonstrated at Storage Networking World last week for the first time. The specification was announced last spring and is expected to be presented to the American National Standards Institute for review as a standard early next year.