1. Voyage of the U. K. JISC Federation: Shibbolizing the U. K
Voyage of the U.K. JISC Federation: Shibbolizing the U.K.'s Research, Higher, and Further Education
The Service Provider Perspective View from a U.K. National Academic Data Centre
Ross MacIntyre, MIMAS Service Manager
The University of Manchester, U.K.
Copyright Ross MacIntyre This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statements appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

2. This overview illustrates the various services available from MIMAS.
As you can see, services include bibliographic reference, - WOK ZETOC
electronic journals, JSTOR
scientific data, CROSSFIRE
socio-economic data, UK CENSUS
and spatial data SATELLITE IMAGES
Some of these services are freely available and some require site subscription.
MIMAS is also engaged in a number of R&D project areas.
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

3. Project: ShiMMeR – Shibbolising MIMAS eResources
Reviewed all MIMAS provided services and summarised their Registration Policy, AuthN & AuthN mechanism and any attributes required by service itself –eitehr functionally or by rights holder.
Shibboleth Implemenation Plans & Notes
Archives Hub – freely available
COPAC – ditto (though in the past we have excluded certain non-UK IP ranges who were repetitively searching)
WoK – From October 2005 we will no longer physically host the service, it will be based at Thomson’s European Data Centre in Ireland. Thomson are implementing Shibboleth support directly. MIMAS providing Athens facility temporarily but Thomson have contracted Eduserv to implement Athens for them, but not clear what role Athens will play in Shibboleth support longer term. Phase 4.
We do need to know the institutional affiliation, as there are institution-specific contents – products, back-files, openURL resolvers, full text links, etc.
Also, IP is just an option for sites – Athens authentication for all sites was and is part of the contractual agreement.
Zetoc Search - Initial work complete – show next.
Zetoc Alert – Also complete, but has been included in a larger redevelopment, implementation of which will required migration of existing users – during Summer.
Threw up a dilema in terms of attributes required. Alert is really a personal information feed, with various configurable settings, so we need a unique persistent id to retain. Search just needs to know your institution. However, having a persistent ID would help make the sessioning more straight-forward and resilient/secure. In abstract – would it be reasonable for us to request an attribute because it (a) made coding better &/or (b) made coding easier?
Here talking about EduPersonTargettedId as well as EduPersonScopedAffliiation, but wider implications.
LitLink - Endeavor may implement Shibboleth support directly for LinkFinderPlus (successor product) - tbc Phase 4
JSTOR - implementing Shibboleth support directly. Currently underway, pilot implementation rather than propduction. Currently AuthN performed in US and AuthZ in UK.
CrossFire - MDL may implement Shibboleth support directly for DiscoveryGate (successor product) – tbc Phase 4
Ariel – n/a
NESLi2 – secure area of webs site with commercially sensitive pricing details regarding consortia journal purchasing. Could eventually work from particular attribute – ‘site-representative’.
Census & ESDS - Co-operative development with UK Data Archive. Although both MIMAS and EDINA host data and provide access, the user must be registered centrally with the Data Archive – but once registered, they have access to thousands of resources that previously required additional, separate registration.
Now Phase 3. Once UKDA done their stuff themselves, they will work with MIMAS & EDINA.
Map & Satellite datasets, now both service coded as Phase 2. Was fairly convoluted and requires registration. Show next.
Here additional data sets will be added and the right’s owner – ESA (Euro Space Agency) apparently *require* personal data to be captured on the individuals using the data. Whether they will accept just personal identifier is to be discussed.
NLN is a repository of Learning Materials for FE. Unaware of any plans by Granada Learning to Shibbolise the CAT – Phase 4
Site request download permission via their RSC -> NLN helpdesk at EDINA -> MIMAS implement.
Not sure that Hairdressing Training & other vocational training materials will require Shibbolising!
MIMAS Reps, contains contact details for staff at institutions who are familiar with various MIMAS services, amongst other things - No longer protected - though may be in future.
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

4. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

5. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

6. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

7. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

8. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

9. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

10. Authorisation check shows user from a non-subscribing institution
©BBC
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

11. Development version of Hairdressing Training
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

12. Local WAYF – only shows subsection of federation members who subscribe to the service.
Last IdP stored in cookie for quick selection
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

13. No attributes example
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

14. No attributes are asserted for the aptly named user, “noattributes”, and so we don’t get as far as the authorisation check (attribute eduPersonScopedAffiliation required)
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

15. Still development version
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

16. Members of local WAYF can be displayed as a list (as shown on previous slide) or as a drop-down menu (useful if the list is long – unlike this case!!)
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

17. Valid user example
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

18. User from a subscribed institution passes the authorisation check and is granted access to the resource
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

19. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

20. Development version of Landmap
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

21. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

22. Tiles selected
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

23. Scroll down selection page
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

24. Selection information displayed for user
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

25. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

26. New user (not previously registered with the service)
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

27. Details obtained from home institution via attribute transfer
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

28. Details presented for user to verify
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

29. Service manager is ed that a new user has registered - potential for validation check here before allowing user to download data
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

30. Personalisation of service (using data from registration database)
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

31. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

32. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

33. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

34. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

35. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

36. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

37. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

38. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

39. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

40. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

41. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

42. October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.

43. (Some) Questions for Service Providers
Are you clear on your existing Regn, AuthN/Z & Attribute requirements?
Which Federation(s) can/should you join?
What Attributes can/should be requested/required and (obtained) from whom?
Does this remove the requirement for local/distributed registration?
How will you decide on your User Interface(s) during & after?
What are you going to tell people - How do you explain ‘middleware’?!
The term “federation” has emerged in recent years to describe groups of organisations which agree to adopt common policies and technical standards to provide a common infrastructure for managing access to resources and services in a uniform way. It is primarily associated with the Shibboleth technology but the term could arguably be used in a more general sense.
No more user/department/faculty-level usage statistics?
User support issue if log file doesn’t contain recognisable username?
Contractual obligations re auditing
October 2006
Funded by JISC and ESRC to serve the UK academic and research communities.