entityID format

[Rhys Smith]

On 7 Oct 2016, at 14:42, Mark K. Miller <max at psu.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On 7 Oct 2016, at 07:30, Andrew Morgan <morgan at orst.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'm on-boarding a new SP named "e-Builder".  They aren't members of InCommon, so they sent me their metadata.xml file directly.  It begins with:
>>> 
>>> <md:EntityDescriptor ID="_mKch.03nGrlMcKptFQIJa8c6dg"
>>> cacheDuration="PT1440M" entityID="sso.e-builder.net"
>>> xmlns:md="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata">
>>> 
>>> Is that an allowed entityID format?
>> 
>> Nope.
> 
> In my experience, though, it won't cause your IdP any problem at all.  Of course, my experience may only be referencing the v2 IdP, I'm not sure I've tried one of those with the v3 IdP.

Oh yes, technically it won’t *break* anything. But it’s not good practice, and trying to register entityIDs like that on InCommon or the UK federation, or any other federation that knows what they’re doing, will result in a polite but firm rejection.

If you’re doing things bilaterally with them, then it’s your decision. Many places have accepted this bad practice from Google and Microsoft - because they don’t have much choice in the matter. If you have any sway with the provider at all, however, definitely always try to get them to do it right before giving in.

Rhys.
—
Dr Rhys Smith
Chief Technical Architect, Trust & Identity
Jisc

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