OpenID Firstlook

OpenID and DotNetNuke?

The DotNetNuke team is always looking at new web and .Net technology to see if it makes sense for our community.  Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about OpenID which is a fairly new specification aimed at simplifying identity and identity management.  When ever we evaluate new technology, one of the first questions often asked is:  How hard will this be to implement?  We constantly have to weigh the cost of implementation and maintenance against the desirability of the feature.  We must also take into account how the implementation might impact the DotNetNuke platform and what other features might need to be pushed out in order to spend time on the initial implementation.

As part of my normal job I am constantly looking at new web technologies and evaluating them.  Below is a simple video showing a proof of concept for implementing OpenID in Asp.Net.  This is a rather trivial exercise but is really the first step in determining the feasibility of implementing this in DNN.  There are still lots of issues to be addressed and looked at before we make a decision about supporting this.  During this year we certainly need to renew our commitment to solidifying our existing platform, including the Active Directory implementation which could really use some additional resources aimed at improving the level of integration.  We will continue to watch OpenID as it continues to mature since we feel that this is likely to be with us for a long time now that Microsoft has given it's tacit support to the standard.

For more information on OpenID check out:

• Andrew Arnot's Blog
• Recent Hanselminutes episode
• MyOpenID.com
• OpenID.Net