***MACE-Dir Call 11-August-2008***

**Attending**
Brendan Bellina, USC (chair)
Etan Weintraub, Johns Hopkins U.
Tom Barton, U. Chicago
Scott Cantor, OSU
Renee Frost, Internet2
Nate Klingenstein, Internet2
Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)

**New Action Items**
[AI] (SteveO and Brendan) will make the change to the eduPerson (200806) spec, per item 1 below.
[AI] (Brendan) will submit the change to MACE for comment.
[AI] (MACE-Dir) review and edit the group usage survey as you are inclined to do so, before the next MACE-Dir call 25-August-2008.
<https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedir/Survey+on+Group+Usage>
[AI] (Brendan) will poll the mailing list for feedback on the use of name fields, and whether they have had the need to extend eduPerson locally with additional name fields.
[AI] (Brendan) will coordinate with the leaders of the Educause IdM Constituent Group, toward the goal of polling that group along with MACE-Dir for feedback on the use of commercial and open-source IdM products.

*Carryover Action Items*
[AI] (RL "Bob") will announce eduPersonAssurance on the TF-EMC2 list
[AI] (Bill Weems) will share a whitepaper addressing global Identity Management.
[AI] (Tim Crouch) Craft a survey on eduCourse adoption and usage.
[AI] (Bob Morgan) will craft a survey on use of the mail attribute and possible need for additional email attributes.

**Discussion**
1. Victoriano Giralt noticed that both eduPersonAssurance and eduPersonEntitlement are specified in the eduPerson LDIFs as being case-sensitive (CaseExactMatch, or equivalent), but are in the spec as case-insensitive (CaseIgnoreMatch). As these are commonly populated with URI's, which are case-sensitive, the question is whether the spec should be changed. It has been noted by Peter Schober that these attributes can also be populated with URL's and not all of a URL is case-sensitive.

It was noted that URLs used as identifiers are treated as case-sensitive as a practical matter.

After discussion on the call, the spec will be changed to CaseExactMatch. Brendan will send an update to MACE for comment.

[AI] (SteveO and Brendan) will make the change to the spec.
[AI] (Brendan) will submit the change to MACE for comment.

2. Etan Weintraub has begun work on a survey on group usage. It is posted at <https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedir/Survey+on+Group+Usage>

Etan started with Brendan’s initial set of questions, then added to them. The goal of this survey is to learn what obstacles or challenges are inhibiting the use of groups, and to inform possible future MACE-Dir and I2MI efforts in this area.

Inconsistency in application treatment/usage of groups was noted as a common obstacle to externalized group management.

Note for reference the responses to an earlier Group Practices Survey in 2001.
http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/groups/

Our goal will be to have the survey ready by the end of August, responses collected by the end of September, and being able to discuss the results at the MACE-Dir session at the Fall Internet2 Member Meeting mid-October.

[AI] (MACE-Dir) review and edit the survey as you are inclined to do so, by the next MACE-Dir call 25-August.

3. Discussion of additional name attributes - displaygivenname, displaysurname, sorteddisplayname

For several of our applications the givenname and surname attributes have not been as useful as we had hoped because of being multi-valued. We have had to create several name-based attributes. Is this something others have had to do as well, and might it make sense to have standard attributes defined in eduPerson for this purpose along with eduPersonNickname?

displayFirstName and displayLastName were proposed as alternatives.

It was noted that these fields are primarily used for searching rather than provisioning.

[AI] (Brendan) will poll the mailing list for feedback on the use of name fields, and whether they have had the need to extend eduPerson locally with additional name fields.

4. Several of the MACE-Dir documents have not been updated in a long while. Is there benefit and interest in updating them? Looking for volunteers.

The use of common IdM products (COTS or open source) in higher-ed was cited as a topic that would be useful to look at, e.g. in case studies potentially feeding a subsequent best practices document. The goal would be to look at the most useful features and provide a useful reference for higher-ed in evaluating potential products, rather than directly comparing products.

[AI] (Brendan) will coordinate with the leaders of the Educause IdM Constituent Group, toward the goal of polling that group along with MACE-Dir for feedback on the use of commercial and open-source IdM products.