JISC

Federating the Next Generation

Abstract

Metadata Aggregation

By any measure, the UK federation is a great success.  It has grown from its modest roots in the predecessor SDSS federation to encompass nearly eight hundred formal members who between them operate almost a thousand entities.

In the age of the World Wide Web, however, we're used to being able to reach further than just those organisations with which we have direct formal arrangements.   "Metadata aggregation" is one term for a technical approach that has been developed to help extend the reach of federation members beyond the limits imposed by a single federation's membership agreements into the realms of partner federations and beyond.

Although the presentation will necessarily cover some technical topics, most will be dealt with at a conceptual level in the absence of detailed questions.

Amongst the non-technical topics covered will be the impact that this technical approach has on our thinking about the role of federation organisations when federated access reaches "internet scale".

Presenter

Ian Young

Ian Young has worked in the area of systems software (operating systems, compilers and computer networking) for more than three decades. Since 2004, he has worked with the SDSS group at EDINA, a JISC National Data Centre based at the University of Edinburgh, on the problem of federated identity and federated access management. In that role, he was involved in the establishment of the development SDSS Federation and its production successor, the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research. He believes that the most successful middleware is both ubiquitous and invisible, and looks forward to federated identity attaining this ideal.