Shibboleth Developers

Hello everyone,

Our company is currently trying to implement Shibboleth on top of our 
existing authentication and Athens implementation.

We're a 100% Microsoft platform, so IIS-6 on Windows Server 2003.

Our current Authentication system (ERights 2.7) uses an ASAPI filter and 
therefore we are not keen on any Shibboleth implementation involving another 
ASAPI filter.

Our goal with Shibboleth is to allow users from other Institutions to 
"authenticate" themselves through Shibboleth,  so that we can give the user 
the same access as that Institution would have in our current ERights 
Authentication system. (Basically allowing any user from that institution 
access to our restricted content outside of there institution)

Currently we do the same thing with Athens,    where an Athens user will come 
to our site,  access a restricted page and get denied.  Upon getting Denied 
they can choose to authenticate via Athens, which sends them off to Athens 
where they login and get passed back to our site with a "Athens Token" that 
identifies them.   We use this "Token" to identify there Institute and then 
give the relevant access.

We would prefer to do the same with Shibboleth.

We will be Authenticating all Shibboleth accesses through the UK-FEDERATION 
iDP.

Therefore my question is..    Can we..

1.  Use a Script (ASP/VBScript) to emulate the functions of the IIS ASAPI 
filter?   For example, creating any Sessions/Attributes and passing the user 
to the iDP for Authentication.

2.  Use a script (ASP/VBScript) to read the response from the iDP,  Read all 
the Attributes, allowing us to identify the Institute and then setup relevant 
priviledges in our own authentication software.

If the answer is yes,  any information would be greatly appreciated!

We assume we're not the open people in the world not wanting to use the ASAPI 
Filter, so hopefully people have had similar experiences!

Much appreciated,

Gareth Palfrey
IT Application Developer
Royal Society of Chemistry
Cambridge, UK
Tel: 01223 43 2218
E-mail: