Re: [saml-dev] saml:Attribute vs. md:RequestedAttribute

[Ian Young <ian@iay.org.uk>]

Scott Cantor wrote:

> Seems to be a DOA idea, since SPs don't seem willing to document themselves
> and federations don't seem willing to collect it.

We've had some success in the SDSS Federation with getting most 
significant services to document their requirements for us, and we've 
been collecting and publishing that information in human-readable form:

	http://sdss.ac.uk/wiki/wiki.pl?AttributeUsage

We're planning to continue this practise as we transition to the UK 
Federation.  Which is to say, not every SP will want to do this but we 
expect to ask anyway.

We have considered using the metadata facility to express the same 
information, but as far as I know there isn't anything that actually 
makes use of that metadata at present.  That's put people off the idea 
somewhat, as it would mean we'd be publishing metadata without any 
sanity check other than schema validity.  If, say, the Shibboleth IdP 
was making use of this information, we'd have quite a strong incentive.

It's some catch, that Catch-22.

	-- Ian