Per-Entity Metadata: A Pilot Study
In June 2013, the InCommon Technical Advisory Committee convened the Metadata Distribution Working Group. The output of the Working Group included an initial set of Phase 1 Recommendations (the implementation of which is now complete) and another set of Phase 2 Recommendations (whose implementation is a work-in-progress).
One of the WG’s Phase 2 Recommendations is to conduct a pilot study of per-entity metadata:
RECOMMENDATION: Conduct a pilot study that explores the utility of [signed, per-entity metadata] as an alternative to metadata aggregates, and evaluate current implementations of this model to discover problems or identify new requirements.
The only SAML implementation known to support dynamic metadata exchange of per-entity metadata via the Metadata Query Protocol is the Shibboleth SP software. If you know of other implementations that do dynamic metadata exchange in this way, please post your experiences to the metadata-support mailing list.
It is well known that Shibboleth, simpleSAMLphp, and other Metadata Client Software can automatically refresh the entire InCommon metadata aggregate. We expect that these software implementations can automatically refresh per-entity metadata as well but one of the goals of this pilot project is to demonstrate this capability. If you know of other metadata client software or SAML implementations with the ability to automatically refresh per-entity metadata, please document this fact on the metadata-support mailing list.