questions re the ChainingMetadataProvider type

[Cantor, Scott]

> I think there is a deployment issue here. Some federations document the use of
> ChainingMetadataProvider while others do not. I know of at least one
> federation document that does not use ChainingMetadataProvider but neither
> does it use sortKey on the bare metadata providers. AFAICT by reading *our*
> documentation, that results in an unspecified search order. I'm pretty sure
> that's not what the author of the federation document intended.

Everybody with > 1 metadata source is chaining. That's just mandatory to make the config work (which is not exactly true in the SP, it can be implicit there).

I believe you're formally correct that we don't specify the order without the key. In practice it's always been what you'd expect, but not specifying it leaves us the ability to change something if we have to, and it's certainly a good idea to specify the key. And no, I don't do it myself, but that's the luxury of being part of the team that would decide to break it, so I'd have warning. I certainly would not advocate anybody document doing it that way (including our own defaults if that's the case).

-- Scott