An open discussion list for topics related to the eduGAIN interfederation service.

[Lalla Maria Laura Mantovani <marialaura.mantovani AT garr.it>]

At 16:47 19/01/2015, Peter Schober wrote:
> * Thomas Lenggenhager <lenggenhager AT switch.ch> [2015-01-19 16:31]:
> > For these, not much changes with interfederation.
> > http://iopscience.iop.org is one such example. The adapted the
> > wording from 'UK Federation' to institutional login recently. The
> > login button still reads 'Login via Shibboleth' :-(
>
> Right, at
> https://ticket.iop.org/inst_login?return=http%3A%2F%2Fiopscience.iop.org%2F
> there is no categorization or grouping of IDPs into regions, countries
> or federations.
>
> Compare with Atypon's "Literatum", sadly one of the more popular
> platforms, https://www.emeraldinsight.com/action/showLogin?uri=%2F
> (sadly because they also don't support SAML2): On that page you'll
> have to find and select "Shibboleth" again :( and from there you'll
> find "Geographic Regions".
> Some Austrian institutions are in "UK Higher Education" (those that
> participate via eduGAIN), even though Emerald joined our federation
> years ago and there used to be a selector for Austrian institutions.
> (That probably broke, too, when they moved to "Literatum", just like
> their SAML2 support we previously enjoyed.)
>
> So what would we want the publisher to do here?
> Asking them to rename "UK Higher Education" to something else is
> likely to create confusion among UK institutions and librarians, and
> it's unlikely we can come up with something that reflects the current
> meaning "Mostly UK institutions but could be from any place in the
> world, really".
> Unless they (all publishers, really) give up on grouping by region,
> country or federation we can't really ask them to rename the UK
> federation to anything else, I guess.
>
> Open to suggestions. Unless noone here intends to federate with
> publishers via eduGAIN.

Another different behaviour is shown by Nature 
http://www.nature.com/nams/svc/institutelogin?target=/
IDEM is federated to Nature through eduGAIN.
Here we see IDPs grouped into countries categories.
I think this grouping is done via the the correct management of the 
"registrationAuthority" attribute found in the entities metadata.
I'd like to see this kind of grouping or no grouping at all.
So I'm happy both with Nature DS and with IOP DS.

I'm not happy with Emerald DS, and I consider a wrong behaviour to 
show IDPs coming from different federations as they were belonging to 
UK Federation.

Moreover I don't like the proposal of  renaming "UK Higher Education" 
to something else.

As all these SP entities are registered to eduGAIN through UK 
Federation, I suggest that UKF will deal with their SPs forwarding to 
them the proper information on how to manage metadata and discovey service.
If, in the future, something similar will happen with SPs registered 
through other federations, the registrar federation will take care of his SP.

Best regards
Lalla