[dvn-auth] Shibboleth persistent identifier: persistent-id vs. eppn vs. ePTID vs. NameID

Hello! Question for all you Shibboleth experts out there... If I'd like to take one of the attributes and store in in Dataverse as a persistent identifier? Which one should I use? "persistent-id" would be the one to use. It looks nice and unique: persistent-id: https://idp.testshib.org/idp/shibboleth!https://apitest.dataverse.org/shibb… However! I'm hearing that "persistent-id" may not be so commonly used... that perhaps in Higher Ed anyway "eppn" might be used instead. The weird thing to me about "eppn", however is that (at least from TestShib) there's a username in it: eppn: myself(a)testshib.org Furthermore, eppn is allowed to change (!) according to https://www.internet2.edu/media/medialibrary/2013/09/04/internet2-mace-dir-… "Values of eduPersonPrincipalName are often, but not required to be, human-friendly, and may change as a result of various business processes. They may also be reassigned after a locally-defined period of dormancy. Applications that require a guarantee of non-reassignment and more stability, but can tolerate values unfriendly (and unknown) to humans should refer to the eduPersonTargetedID attribute." So... maybe we should require eduPersonTargetedID (also known as ePTID) instead... But then I checked in with a non-Higher Ed person, and he uses Assertion -> Subject -> NameID. It looks like this: <saml2:NameID Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent">user1</saml2:NameID> It's got "persistent" in it, which I like. :) of [NameID]" anyway, so maybe I should just require NameID so non-Higher Ed people aren't confused. Of course, I may just be confusing myself... I hope it's clear what I'm asking... What we need on the Dataverse side is to but something in the "FIXME" below: permanentId = httpServletRequest.getAttribute("FIXME"); Should the "FIXME" be "NameID" perhaps? "eppn"? Something else? Please advise. We'll be using this value to find the Shib users in the system each time they log in. Thanks! Phil p.s. Chats I just had (summarized above): http://irclog.perlgeek.de/shibboleth/2014-07-29 Time Nick Message 19:57 pdurbin hsnopi or rkeene do you use "persistent-id" for anything? 19:59 hsnopi not taht I am specifically aware of. I think it is used to give a user a permenant id but i could be very very wrong 19:59 pdurbin that's how I was thinking I'd use it 19:59 pdurbin but I'm also hearing that eppn is preferred, maybe? 20:00 pdurbin the IdP at http://testshib.org sends both 20:00 hsnopi that is so far out of my league 20:00 pdurbin eppn: myself(a)testshib.org 20:00 pdurbin persistent-id: https://idp.testshib.org/idp/shibboleth!https://apitest.dataverse.org/shibb… 20:01 pdurbin persistent-id seemed "safer" to use... more unique... 20:01 hsnopi i seem to vaguely recall something about eppn going away at soem point. 20:01 pdurbin hmm http://www.evanchooly.com/logs/%2523glassfish/2014-07-29 pdurbin whartung: persistent-id or eppn? whartung pdurbin: eh? pdurbin heh pdurbin whartung: http://irclog.perlgeek.de/shibboleth/2014-07-29 whartung frankly, I don't recognize either of those :) pdurbin whartung: what attribute do you use to uniquely identify a user who has logged in via shibboleth? whartung Subject->NAmeID pdurbin huh pdurbin I'm not used to seeing "->" in an attribute whartung Assertion -> Subject -> NameID pdurbin oh oh whartung no, it's the heirarchy pdurbin whartung: you're giving me the xpath ;) whartung yea pdurbin cool. thanks pdurbin NameID. hmm pdurbin commonly used? whartung Apparently pdurbin ok. eppn comes from higher ed. eduPersonPrincipalName https://www.incommon.org/federation/attributesummary.html whartung ok whartung yea, we're not in that domain whartung generic Response of ours: http://pastie.org/private/oay0trwmvrw9e0haekqmlw pdurbin ok so <saml2:NameID Format="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent">kayyagari</saml2:NameID> pdurbin interesting whartung right pdurbin so I'm seeing "persistent" there and under "longevity" at https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/SHIB2/NameIDAttributes pdurbin "persistent: identifiers which are good for a long period of time (e.g. years) but which the IdP may revoke" whartung yea, perahps we should use "permanent" instead pdurbin right -- Philip Durbin Software Developer for http://dataverse.org http://www.iq.harvard.edu/people/philip-durbin