Re: [saml-dev] is the "xsi:type" mandatory to be present for theAttributeValue in a SAML Response

["Cantor, Scott E." <cantor.2@osu.edu>]

On 6/1/11 8:13 AM, "Chad La Joie" <lajoie@itumi.biz> wrote:

>Yes, the schema instance datatype is optional.
>
>I personally think it's good practice to include them so as to give a
>hint to the receiver about what to expect in the field (and if they
>ignore it, that's fine too).

It's considered bad form to use it for any non-built-in data type, since
that makes validation impossible in general. That's all the spec has to
say about it. For built-in types, sending it doesn't hurt anything, though
it bloats the XML.

In SAML, all attribute names should be URIs and they should self-identify
the data type, making xsi:type superfluous except in the case of variant
values within a single attribute.

-- Scott