ESAPI Documentation

Overview
This page documents our current thoughts on the various documents we need to produce for the ESAPI project, and the audience, purpose, and high level outline of each document.

Documentation Plan
Proposed Documents

The following is the set of documentation that is proposed for ESAPI. This is still a work in progress.

ESAPI Executive Overview
Audience: Executives Purpose: To provide executives with an understanding of: Outline: (See Purpose)
 * What ESAPI is? Goals.
 * Why an ESAPI is necessary. (App Sec is important/why/standardization)
 * The benefits of using an ESAPI? (Cost, ROI)
 * The current status of ESAPI? (Maturity, Stability, Licensing, Support)
 * Who created it, where it came from, credibility, who is using it?
 * How to adopt an ESAPI?

FAQ (For non-users)
Audience: Potential users of ESAPI Purpose: To provide 'quick' hit, information about ESAPI Topics: Summary of main points in the Executive Overview

FAQ (For people using ESAPI)
Audience (Technical people using ESAPI) Purpose: To provide 'quick' hit information about how to use ESAPI, and add to or integrate ESAPI with existing security controls. Outline:
 * How to use it the first time
 * Common usage issues
 * Common extension questions
 * Performance

Getting Started Guide
Audience: Developers new to ESAPI Purpose: Explain to these developers how to start immediately using ESAPI Outline: (20 pages or less)
 * Overview of ESAPI
 * How to download, install, get dependencies
 * Where is all the documentation/javadoc
 * Where/what is Swingset - where are the coding examples
 * List of the top 5 quick hits you can achieve with ESAPI
 * Concrete examples of how to accomplish each of these 5 things, with problem descriptions, example problem code, and example code that addresses the problem

How to Secure an Existing Application with ESAPI
Audience: Developers Purpose: Explain to developers how to address most of the common security problems in an existing application using ESAPI Outline:
 * Similar to previous, except it goes through all major areas where ESAPI provides controls, not just the top 5.

How to Use ESAPI in a New Application
Audience: Developers Purpose: Provide application architecture guidance on how to build your applications in a manner that facilitates the use of ESAPI. Benefit: This should help make it easier to use ESAPI, make your application more secure, easier to analyze, and easier to maintain. Assumption: This assumes that an ESAPI that works in the developers' environment is already available. Outline/Topics:
 * Architectural guidance for each control, if any, on how to take most facilitate the use of ESAPI in your application
 * e.g., use of DAOs, application organizational considerations wrt Access Control, etc.

How to Create a Custom ESAPI for Your Organization
Audience: Organizations and developers that want to use ESAPI Purpose: How to extend or customize ESAPI for your organization or project Outline:
 * Overview of related controls, how dependent/independent they are on the rest of the API
 * For each control:
 * Expectations for 'as is' use, extension, replacement of this control
 * How to extend this control
 * How to replace this control

Goals: All of this content would be on the wiki, and PDFs of each of these 'may' be produced as well.

Javadoc

 * Review/Update all Javadoc to make sure its complete, accurate, and properly extends javadoc from other classes
 * Make sure all parameters are documented as well as return values

Status: This was done in the Spring of 2009 but probably deserves a refresh at this point.

Web Pages

 * Revamp the ESAPI Website (lots of details needed on this)
 * How will ESAPI be updated and released.
 * Features Roadmap
 * Where to get ESAPI source and libraries - a list of language specific libraries is here: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Enterprise_Security_API#tab=Downloads
 * How to build ESAPI from source - See: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/ESAPI-Building and: http://www.owasp.org/index.php/ESAPI-BuildingWithEclipse
 * How to integrate ESAPI into your project
 * How to contribute to ESAPI

Other Documents

 * ESAPI Architecture/Design Guideline
 * Assurance Argument ESAPI_Assurance