unverified claims

Last week Microsoft and IBM published the Understanding WS-Federation (html | pdf) white paper. 

As Don has already said the paper covers two scenarios in which different features of WS-Federation are demonstrated. I think the two scenarios chosen provide an accessible introduction to these features.

The first example covers an enterprise business scenario around an RFP service. This example shows a simpler federation scenario between two participants. The second example is a healthcare scenario around access to patient records. This a more complicated example involving three participants. The paper is not exhaustive in its coverage of the specification but it wasn’t intended to be. I think we did hit a good balance between breadth and depth. Anyone who reads this paper should come away with a good handle on the capabilities of WS-Federation and how it builds upon WS-Trust.

We’ll be covering some of this material at the first meeting of the WSFED TC next week, I’ll provide an update on that here after the meeting.