Authentication mechanisms can also support proxy authorization, a facility allowing one user to assume the identity of another.
John Gardiner Myers wrote the original SASL specification (RFC 2222) in 1997.
In 2006, that document was replaced by RFC 4422 authored by Alexey Melnikov and Kurt D. Zeilenga.
Application protocols define their representation of SASL exchanges with a profile.
A protocol has a service name such as "ldap" in a registry shared with GSSAPI and Kerberos.