COmanage Developers List

Here's the note from Rod that I mentioned; it describes the most 
recent implementation of the Shib Discovery Service

This is a possible choice for the WAYF/DS within a multi-national CO.

Try typing Ken to see how it works.....

> Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:22:47 +0100
> From: Rod Widdowson 
> <>
> Subject: [shibboleth-core] Discovery Service UI changes
> To: 
>
>
> I've just checked in a slew of presentation layer changes to the 
> Discovery Service.
>
> To start with I have made the Internet2 branded DS's use the dynamic search.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/lvjtsd is the single fed version and 
> http://tinyurl.com/mpmgyn is the multi-fed version.  This second is 
> quite interesting since it shows quite how well the dynamic search 
> works with about a thousand IdPs.  The site takes some time to 
> download but that is because we are actually shipping information 
> about the 1000 IdPs down to the web pages 3 times.
>
> But what took my development time was Scott's observation that this 
> is a nice fit for the Embedded WAYF stuff from Switch.  I spent some 
> time digging around with this and ended up with the conclusion that 
> they work together quite wonderfully.  You collect the IdPs and the 
> hints (from the cookie) via a JavaScript download (so you get to 
> read the cookies) and you dispatch back to the SP via the DS (so you 
> can set the cookie).
>
> As far as the DS is concerned goes this is just another JSP file (to 
> render out some JavaScript) and small amount of configuration (to 
> make the JSP visible).
>
> I have built two extremely ugly example static HTML files to 
> demonstrate the technology.  These are checked in but also available 
> at http://www.steadingsoftware.com/wayf/static.html  and 
> http://www.steadingsoftware.com/wayf/static2.html
>
> I am going to try to work with Rhys and JISC to make these into the 
> "style guide for SPs".  That is to say ensure that there is 
> documentation, and that things look "nice" and follow the single 
> branding that that JISC report talks about.
>
> We all know that SPs won't read style guides and don't want to 
> deploy & manage Java containers, but if the "SP-Discovery Service" 
> is a static HTML page that they only have to change 2 lines of (to 
> point to their federation WAYF) I think that there is a great chance 
> that they will actually deploy their own SP.  Indeed is there any 
> reason why this shouldn't eventually become part of the Shib SP 
> install?
>
> Although there is no change to any of the Java code I would really 
> like to crank all this stuff into a new DS release.  The dynamic 
> search is funky enough to justify it and the sooner we can get the 
> infrastructure that the embedded DS needs out there, the faster will 
> be any eventual pick up of this technology.
>
> Rod