Accessing the Preview InCommon metadata using MDQ query

The production InCommon Metadata Service is available at:

https://mdq-preview.incommon.org

The service supports the MDQ query protocol, which enables you to look up individual entity's metadata using its entity ID. To query, connect to the MDQ location with the following query string syntax:

https://mdq-preview.incommon.org/entities/<$entityID>

where <$entityID> is the URL-encoded string of the entity ID you are searching. If you are searching for entity ID: https://acme.org/idp, the web query would be:

https://mdq-preview.incommon.org/entities/http%2F$2Facme.org%2Fidp

Fully federation ready software such as Shibboleth, has built in support for the MDQ protocol. They may have configuration options to help simplify implementation. See:

• Configure Shibboleth IdP for Preview MDQ environment
• Configure Shibboleth SP for the Preview MDQ environment
• Prefetch an entity with Shibboleth in the Preview MDQ environment

Retrieving metadata as aggregates

In addition to the querying feature, the Metadata Service produces two aggregates for bulk download. They can be used in place of the legacy InCommon aggregates should you not be able to take advantage of the MDQ query protocol. The IdP-only aggregate, in particular, is useful for discovery services to retrieve/list IdPs in the federations in the discovery UI.

Configure your client with an aggregate below just like you would any hosted metadata, or how you had previously configured your client to use the legacy InCommon aggregates.

You will need to configure your clients to use new signing keys issued for the environment you wish to download metadata from. The aggregates available are:

Aggregates for the Preview environment

https://mdq-preview.incommon.org/entities

https://mdq-preview.incommon.org/entities/idps/all

Validate the signing key

Signing key: Metadata signing key for the Preview environment.