Which software is right?

[Cantor, Scott]

On 4/8/13 11:23 AM, "Constance   Morris" <cmorris at daltonstate.edu> wrote:

>Thank you very much for the break down and parallel with CAS - that
>helped. What is the main difference between Shibboleth and CAS - is it
>the federation? If you were in my shoes, would you prefer one over the
>other and which one?

Federation, more advanced attribute support. Shibboleth, as opposed to
SAML in general, will never allow API-based integration with applications,
you must integrate through CGI, similar to how something like mod_cas
would work. SAML implementations come in all designs.

CAS is a back-channel protocol, SAML can be front or back channel or a
combination.

Shibboleth is a heavily XML-based system. If that's not your bag, run away
fast.

I care more about how integration is done than what software is used. If
you use APIs and write application code, and you work at a typical
university, you will be running that code basically forever, because of
the way applications get maintained at universities. I don't like that
model, and Shibboleth is always going to be more complex in order to make
it replaceable.

>And yes, my goal is to make the portal itself and the applications to be
>part of a single SSO umbrella. I would attempt to put SAML LdP in the
>portal, but ours is very unstable. We currently use Luminis 4 for our
>portal - if you know about luminis  then you know how stubborn it is and
>how it likes to rebel against any changes made.

I don't, really, I'm generally pretty ignorant of portals.

>By the way, may I ask what is used at OSU for your portal....luminis,
>Campus EAI...?

I'm happy to say we don't have a portal. We don't centralize our services,
and it wouldn't make any sense to have one.

-- Scott