PR0001: Revised federation metadata proposal -- MigrationConsiderations

[Don Schmidt <donsch@windows.microsoft.com>]

Issue PR0001 was changed to Active status on the August 5^th TC call.  The only objection raised was in relation to migration [as noted in the minutes] because there are current implementations of WSFED spec currently being shipped and others in the queue getting ready for shipment.  Based on discussions with various development teams, the following migration proposal is recommended.

 

The revised federation metadata format based on SAML metadata constructs will be the RECOMMENDED format.  WS-Federation will be worded to state that a federation metadata document SHOULD be rooted in the <md:EntityDescriptor> or <md:EntititiesDescriptor> element.  A federation metadata document MAY be rooted in the <fed:FederationMetadata> element.  However, this latter format is being deprecated and SHOULD NOT be used by new implementations.

 

The possibility of encountering two formats of federation metadata documents requires a clear mechanism to indicate which format has been used in a particular document.  It is straightforward to make the distinction based on the namespace of the root element of the metadata document.

 

·        Original format is rooted in name='FederationMetadata' type='tns:FederationMetadataType' from the fed namespace

·        New format is rooted in name="EntitiesDescriptor" type="md:EntitiesDescriptorType" or name="EntityDescriptor" type="md:EntityDescriptorType" from the md namespace

 

I believe this addresses all the open issues from the minutes of the last TC call.

 

--des

Don Schmidt

Microsoft Corp