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W3C specifies standard protocol to distribute and register public keys, certificates and CAs that can be used for XML-based cryptography, including signature and encryption: XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0). XKMS can be used as standardized frontend to Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).
The XKMS Specification comprises two parts – the XML Key Information Service Specification (XKISS) describing the runtime aspects of key lookup and certificate validation and the XML Key Registration Service Specification (XKRSS) describing the administrative aspects of registering, renewing, revoking and recovering certificates. XKMS Service implements both parts of specification.

XKMS Design

Internal structure of XKMS service is represented on the following figure:

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XKMS Service exposes standardized XKISS and XKRSS SOAP interfaces. Input and output parameters as well as samples of SOAP messages are described in the specification XKMS 2.0.
XKMS implementation supports chain of responsibility design pattern chain-of-responsibility . Each XKMS operation defines handler interface and provides one or more implementations of this interface. Handler implementations are connected into chain. Operation implementation invokes handlers one after another from pre-configured chain until either all handlers will be processed or critical error will occur. This design decision makes XKMS internal implementation quite flexible: it is easy to add/remove handlers, change their order, introduce handlers supporting new backends, etc.
For example certificate can be searched firstly in the LDAP repository by LDAP lookup handler and, if it is not found there, additionally looked in remote PKI using appropriate lookup handler. Logic validation operation is organized in chain is well: first validation handler checks format and expire date of X509 certificate, next one checks certificate trust chain.