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.

Shibboleth term	Local term	Description, notes
Athens	Athens	An authentication system, run on JISC's behalf by EduServ, used to protect many (mainly Library-related) web sites.
Athens resource	Athens resource	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.
Attribute	Attribute, or Information when used collectively	Items of information about people made available by the Raven/Shibboleth service to a web site
eduPersonEntitlement, ePE	Entitlement	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.
eduPersonPrincipalName, ePPN	eduPerson Principal Name	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.
eduPersonScopedAffiliation, ePSA	Status	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.
eduPersonTargetedID, ePTID	Anonymous identifier	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.
Raven	Raven	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.
The Raven/Webauth service	The Raven/Webauth service	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.
Service Provider, SP	Web site	A web-based resource (web site, e-journal, database, etc.) accessed via the Raven/Shibboleth service.
Shibboleth, Shibboleth IdP, IdP	The Raven/Shibboleth service	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.