Frequently Asked Questions about the R&S Category
General FAQs
Which services are eligible for the Research & Scholarship category?
Candidates for the R&S category include InCommon service providers that support research and scholarship as an essential component. For example, a service providing tools for both multi-institutional research collaboration and instruction is eligible as a candidate for the R&S category. (A service intended to support instruction alone is not eligible, however.)
InCommon reviews all applications from potential R&S service providers. Visit the Federation Info pages for a complete list of all R&S service providers.
What is the R&S attribute bundle?
The R&S category defines a bundle of attributes that SPs choose from. InCommon identity providers that support R&S release a minimal subset of this attribute bundle to R&S SPs. For details, see the deployment considerations for IdPs wiki page.
Do all R&S SPs require all attributes in the bundle?
InCommon highly recommends that SPs take a minimalist approach to attributes, only requesting those attributes that they absolutely need. IdPs are encouraged to implement a default policy that releases the R&S attributes to SPs in the R&S category. This requires a one-time change to the IdP's deployment configuration. More detailed deployment guidance for IdPs will be found elsewhere in this wiki. As a side note, a number of IdPs intend to release the R&S attribute bundle to all SPs by default.
Where can I find complete information on the Research & Scholarship Category?
The Research and Scholarship Category home page has detailed information and additional links.
FAQs for SPs
TBD
FAQs for IdPs
Do I need to configure my IdP to release attributes to each and every R&S SP?
No. A one-time configuration is all that's needed.
Today most IdPs configure their attribute release policies around the SP's entity ID (i.e., on an SP-by-SP basis). Every time you type an entity ID into your IdP software configuration, you paint yourself into an ever-smaller corner. To better scale the Federation, we recommend that IdPs configure their attribute release policies using entity attributes instead of entity IDs. This leads to a more robust deployment that is much easier to maintain.
What is an entity attribute?
Once an SP becomes an R&S SP, it receives the R&S entity attribute in metadata. You can support a single R&S SP by configuring its entity ID into your IdP software configuration, or you can support all R&S SPs by configuring the corresponding entity attribute. The latter scales better since it is a one-time configuration change.
What are the deployment options at the IdP?
An IdP has at least three deployment options (in increasing order of deployment difficulty):
- Release a fixed subset of the R&S bundle (or the R&S bundle itself) to all SPs
- Release a fixed subset of the R&S bundle (or the R&S bundle itself) to all R&S SPs by leveraging an entity attribute in SP metadata
- Release a varying subset of the R&S bundle to each R&S SP depending on requested attributes in SP metadata
The Shibboleth IdP software supports either of the first two options out-of-the-box. The latter option requires a special plugin at the Shibboleth IdP. Deployment options are discussed more thoroughly elsewhere in this wiki.