The Research & Scholarship Category in Entity Metadata
R&S SPs and IdPs are tagged in metadata with entity attributes. The entity attribute for SPs simply means "I am an R&S SP" (the meaning of which is discussed on R&S home page) while the entity attribute for IdPs means "I support R&S" (defined on the IdP support page for R&S).
Both entity attributes have a standard attribute name (see: “The Entity Category SAML Entity Metadata Attribute Type," draft-macedir-entity-attribute-00.xml, http://macedir.org/
) and the same attribute value. The entity attributes are multi-valued, that is, when other service categories are added in the future, a single attribute name will be associated with multiple attribute values.
R&S Entity Attribute for SPs
A typical R&S SP has the following entity attribute in metadata (whitespace added for readability):
<mdattr:EntityAttributes
xmlns:mdattr="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:metadata:attribute">
<!-- standard entity attribute for R&S SPs -->
<saml:Attribute
xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion"
NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri"
Name="http://macedir.org/entity-category">
<saml:AttributeValue>
http://id.incommon.org/category/research-and-scholarship
</saml:AttributeValue>
</saml:Attribute>
</mdattr:EntityAttributes>
Some R&S SPs have the following multi-valued entity attribute in metadata (whitespace added for readability):
<mdattr:EntityAttributes
xmlns:mdattr="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:metadata:attribute">
<!-- standard entity attribute for R&S SPs -->
<saml:Attribute
xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion"
NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri"
Name="http://macedir.org/entity-category">
<saml:AttributeValue>
http://id.incommon.org/category/research-and-scholarship
</saml:AttributeValue>
<saml:AttributeValue>
http://refeds.org/category/research-and-scholarship
</saml:AttributeValue>
</saml:Attribute>
</mdattr:EntityAttributes>
Such an SP satisfies the requirements of both the InCommon R&S Category (as described on the R&S home page) and the REFEDS R&S Category.
Note: InCommon Operations is authoritative for the above entity attributes. There is nothing an SP needs to do to manage these entity attributes.
R&S Entity Attribute for IdPs
An R&S IdP has the following entity attribute in metadata (whitespace added for readability):
<mdattr:EntityAttributes
xmlns:mdattr="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:metadata:attribute">
<!-- standard entity attribute for R&S IdPs -->
<saml:Attribute
xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion"
NameFormat="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri"
Name="http://macedir.org/entity-category-support">
<saml:AttributeValue>
http://id.incommon.org/category/research-and-scholarship
</saml:AttributeValue>
</saml:Attribute>
</mdattr:EntityAttributes>
The IdP is authoritative for the above entity attribute. An IdP indicates its willingness and ability to support R&S by following the steps on the IdP support page for R&S.