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It's a really well designed distributed system for calculating access control decisions at scale. It makes a specific authorization CAP tradeoff that allows for

It's a really well designed distributed system for calculating access control decisions at scale. It makes a specific authorization CAP tradeoff that allows for consistency around access checks to different "versions" of a piece of content, allowing older content to be protected by checks served from read replicas and cache. Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of a company building and hosting a Zanzibar implementation as a service: https://authzed.com https://authzed.com

deadmutex 5y ago
> really well designed distributed system Since you're an expert in this area, and I am lazy... :) What makes it well designed? What are the top 2 or 3 things it does to make it a really well designed system?
kleton 5y ago
Is Zanzibar ganpati?
- tazjin 5y ago
  No. Ganpati is a system that provides user & group information (not ACLs themselves), but it's only sort of related to Zanzibar.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Thank you! How does it integrate with apps it controls? Are there libraries? Or does it provide a data format to implement in the app you're working on?
- jschorr 5y ago
  Hi Nick, In the case of Authzed, we provide a gRPC API [0] which can be used from any application or language that supports gRPC, as well as designed client libraries for specific languages [1] to make integration even easier. Applications primarily integrate by making Check requests [2] at any point in which a protected resource is being accessed and Write requests [3] at any point in which permissions are granted or removed. Source: I am the third cofounder at https://authzed.com https://authzed.com :) [0]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/overview https://docs.authzed.com/api/overview [1]: https://docs.authzed.com/lang/lib-index https://docs.authzed.com/lang/lib-index [2]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/check https://docs.authzed.com/api/check [3]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/write https://docs.authzed.com/api/write
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Awesome! Thank you! That makes sense. That's very interesting.

deadmutex 5y ago

> really well designed distributed system Since you're an expert in this area, and I am lazy... :) What makes it well designed? What are the top 2 or 3 things it does to make it a really well designed system?

kleton 5y ago

Is Zanzibar ganpati?

tazjin 5y ago
No. Ganpati is a system that provides user & group information (not ACLs themselves), but it's only sort of related to Zanzibar.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

Thank you! How does it integrate with apps it controls? Are there libraries? Or does it provide a data format to implement in the app you're working on?

jschorr 5y ago
Hi Nick, In the case of Authzed, we provide a gRPC API [0] which can be used from any application or language that supports gRPC, as well as designed client libraries for specific languages [1] to make integration even easier. Applications primarily integrate by making Check requests [2] at any point in which a protected resource is being accessed and Write requests [3] at any point in which permissions are granted or removed. Source: I am the third cofounder at https://authzed.com https://authzed.com :) [0]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/overview https://docs.authzed.com/api/overview [1]: https://docs.authzed.com/lang/lib-index https://docs.authzed.com/lang/lib-index [2]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/check https://docs.authzed.com/api/check [3]: https://docs.authzed.com/api/write https://docs.authzed.com/api/write
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Awesome! Thank you! That makes sense. That's very interesting.