PR0001: Revised federation metadata proposal -- MigrationConsiderations

Issue PR0001 was changed to Active status on the August 5th
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