Question about entityID

[Tom Scavo]

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Ken Weiss <ken.weiss at ucop.edu> wrote:
>
> The problem is that I created an entityID called
> dmp2-development.cdlib.org.

I think you mean an entityID with host part "dmp2-development.cdlib.org".

> This is NOT a host name. There is not, and
> never will be, a server that responds to that name. There will never be an
> entry in any DNS system mapping that name to an IP address.

That's fine.

> However, Internet2 won't register our metadata until the administrative
> contact for the .cdlib.org domain approves it. This is a problem because
> the email address on our registration is out of date, and appears to now
> route to /dev/null. It doesn't bounce, but it doesn't seem to land in
> anyone's inbox, either. I know that's not a good thing, and we're fixing
> it.

That's good. Once it's fixed, I'm sure your metadata registrar will be
happy to resend the email ;-)

> In the meantime, is there any reason I couldn't make my entityID
> dmp2-development, or dmp2-development-CDL, or
> kens-terrific-shibboleth-enabled-application?

Well, an entityID MUST be an URI, so as long as that basic requirement
is met, there is hope.

> The entityID is simply a
> unique identifier that is used as a primary key to retrieve my SP's
> metadata from an IDP.

Functionally, yes.

> It has no other purpose, and could even be an opaque
> unique identifier with no semantic value whatsoever, like
> 4356.5341.3566.5657, right?

No, I'm afraid not. First, an entityID MUST be an URI as mentioned
above. Second, it MUST satisfy InCommon's requirements for an
acceptable entityID (https://spaces.internet2.edu/x/eAUjAQ). The
requirements listed may seem arbitrary, but they are not. Being names,
some entityIDs are definitely better than others. The conventions
documented in the wiki are known to give rise to "good" entityIDs.

The entityID is probably the single most important piece of metadata.
Choose it well, and choose it to last. Changing the name of a
production SAML entity may be painful.

Tom