About the InCommon Metadata Query Service

The InCommon Metadata Query Service ensures that participants can interact securely in a federated environment, reducing the need for one-on-one trust relationships by centralizing trusted metadata distribution.

Participants retrieve fellow participants entity metadata via the InCommon Metadata Service.

The InCommon Metadata Query Service uses the Metadata Query Protocol (MDQ). Because of it, you might hear MDQ used as a short-name in conversation.

The MDQ Service has its own documentation wiki:


configure Use the InCommon Metadata Query (MDQ) Service


Managing your InCommon metadata

InCommon Federation participants can upload and manage its entity metadata using Federation Manager.

Technical information on metadata format

InCommon metadata conforms to the OASIS SAML V2.0 Metadata specification and is schema-valid against the OASIS SAML V2.0 Metadata schema, which is an XML Schema. A handful of extension schema published by OASIS are supported as well.

InCommon metadata is translated from XML to JSON on a daily basis. The latter are used to render the Federation Info Pages. See the wiki topic on Metadata-Driven Web Pages for more information.

A secure, offline metadata signing process aggregates metadata registered by InCommon Participants together with metadata imported from eduGAIN and pushes the signed metadata aggregates to a secure, publicly accessible metadata server.