UK federation Metadata Toolchain
This is the metadata repository and main toolset for the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research ("the UK federation").
Private and Public Repository Variants
There are two variants of the repository:
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The private variant of the repository is used as part of UK federation operations. This is where we maintain federation membership details and the individual metadata documents for each entity registered with the UK federation.
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The public, read-only variant of the repository is made available on GitHub. If you're reading this, you're probably accessing this more restricted version. We provide it for the benefit of other federation operators who may be wondering how the UK federation systems operate, perhaps with a view to implementing something similar.
The public repository is kept roughly in synchronisation with the private one using svn2git. We do this when we have made significant changes to the toolset and we think other federation operators may find the changes of interest.
We exclude a significant amount of material from the public repository. One reason for this is to save space: for example, the private repository retains a copy of every signed metadata aggregate we have ever produced, going back to 2005.
The second main category excluded from the public repository is the actual registration database: version-controlled XML documents describing registered entities and the federation membership. We don't include this material because it may include personal information.
The failure to separate the tooling from the data is, in retrospect, a failing of our current systems and we are working to separate them more cleanly in the future.
Licensing
Everything in the public repository is Copyright (C) 2004–2013, University of Edinburgh. Each file is made available to you under the following terms:
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
