July 2021 Summaries

Authzed is a permissions database that enables applications to store, query, and validate application permissions in one place, aiming to improve the developer experience around permissions by exploring various techniques such as refining onboarding experiences, fulfilling existing internal needs, and gathering outside feedback. By tracking "time to first wow" moments, building a proof of concept for integrating external services, and receiving inputs from customers and potential customers, Authzed is seeking to define what success is for its new feature, Authzed Connect, and continue building upon it.

The Authzed Playground has undergone improvements since its original development, including support for the newly released Schema Configuration Language. To enhance the development experience, syntax highlighting was added to the Monaco editor using a MonarchTokensProvider and DocumentSemanticTokensProvider. The new configuration language introduced concepts like relations and permissions, which required a way to differentiate between them in syntax highlighting. The solution involved registering a custom provider in Monaco that leverages a full TypeScript-based parser to provide semantic information about the entered code. This allows for proper highlighting of relations and permissions within the Playground, providing a better experience for developers working with Authzed's configuration language.

The Authzed team is building a permission system as a service modeled on the Zanzibar service, with the goal of reducing complexity in configuration. The new Authzed configuration language aims to simplify and clarify configuration by providing a more readable and concise way of defining permissions and relationships between objects. This language separates concerns between relation and permission, allowing for distinct authorization decisions and verb-noun pairing for clarity. It also introduces allowed subject types, enhancing developer safety and data for driving new APIs. The language is now fully supported in the Authzed Playground and API, with documentation available for reference.

Google's Zanzibar paper was initially used as inspiration for Authzed, but the broader software community has also taken an interest in this technology. A recent Google trends search corroborates this observation. The CEO of Authzed recently presented a survey of existing Zanzibar-based implementations, which were reviewed against a rubric that included measures such as paper faithfulness, scalability, and CAP compromise. The video of his talk will be posted soon, and it includes a detailed discussion of each implementation. Airbnb's Himeji was one of the implementations reviewed, scoring medium on paper faithfulness, high on scalability, AP on CAP compromise, no zookies on new enemy support, and average on developer UX. The community is encouraged to share their thoughts and introduce new Zanzibar-inspired implementations not covered yet.