A University Shibboleth Glossary

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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.