View source for A University Shibboleth Glossary

This is an attempt to map terms commonly used in the wider Shibboleth community onto words or phrases for use within the University of Cambridge, notably in the Raven/Shibboleth service itself and in its documentation.

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<th>Shibboleth term</th>
<th>Local term</th>
<th>Description, notes</th>
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<td>Athens</td>
<td>Athens</td>
<td>An authentication system, run on JISC's behalf by EduServ, used to protect many (mainly Library-related) '''web sites'''.</td>
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<td>Athens resource</td>
<td>Athens resource</td>
<td>A '''web site''' protected by Athens. Until October 2007, an 'Athens ID and password' (administered by the Library) was required to access Athens resource; access is now available using the '''Raven/Shibboleth''' service.</td>
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<td>Attribute</td>
<td>Attribute, or Information when used collectively</td>
<td>Items of information about people made available by the '''Raven/Shibboleth service''' to a '''web site'''</td>
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<td>eduPersonEntitlement,<br />ePE</td>
<td>Entitlement</td>
<td>An '''attribute''' carrying an arbitrary entitlement, typically specified by a resource, asserted on the user's behalf by '''the Raven/Shibboleth service''', or the value of such an '''attribute'''.</td>
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<td>eduPersonPrincipalName,<br />ePPN</td>
<td>eduPerson Principal Name</td>
<td>An '''attribute''' containing a persistent, unique user identifier which for a given user is the same for any '''resource''' to which it is released, or the value of such an '''attribute'''. Has the form ''crsid''@cam.ac.uk.  We retain the 'eduPerson' part since the term eduPersonPrincipalName is likely to be used by external services.</td>
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<td>eduPersonScopedAffiliation,<br/>ePSA</td>
<td>Status</td>
<td>An '''attribute''' carrying one of a number of standard values reflecting a person's association with the University. Currently only carries the value ''member'' which is assigned to anyone in lookup. May eventually also carry ''staff'' and/or ''student'' as appropriate, or the value of such an '''attribute'''.</td>
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<td>eduPersonTargetedID,<br />ePTID</td>
<td>Anonymous identifier</td>
<td>An '''attribute''' carrying a user identifier allocated at random and different for each combination of user and '''resource''', or the value of such an '''attribute'''.</td>
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<td>Raven</td>
<td>Raven</td>
<td>The University's authentication system for web-based resources. Since October 2007, '''Raven''' has provided both '''the Raven/Webauth service''' and '''the Raven/Shibboleth service'''.</td>
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<td>The Raven/Webauth service</td>
<td>The Raven/Webauth service</td>
<td>The original service offered by '''Raven''' since it's release in 2004. This provides an authenticated CRSid (only), mainly to University web sites, using the Ucam-Webauth protocol. Used only where it is necessary to distinguish between this and '''the Raven/Shibboleth service'''.</td>
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<td>Service Provider,<br />SP</td>
<td>Web site</td>
<td>A web-based resource (web site, e-journal, database, etc.) accessed via '''the Raven/Shibboleth service'''.</td>
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<td>Shibboleth,<br />Shibboleth IdP,<br />IdP</td>
<td>The Raven/Shibboleth service</th>
<td>As in "you need to authenticate using the Raven/Shibboleth service", used only where it is necessary to  distinguish this from '''the Raven/Webauth service'''. This provides both authentication and authorisation information to web sites, currently mainly outside the University, using the Shibboleth protocol.</td>
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