**MACE-Dir Call 7-March-2011**

**Attending**

Keith Hazelton, U. Wisconsin - Madison (co-chair)

Tom Barton, U. Chicago

Mark Scheible, NC State U.

Benn Oshrin, Internet2

Todd Piket, MNSCU

Steven Carmody, Brown U.

Mark Jones, UT-Houston TMC

Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)

**Next call: March 21, 2011 at 5:00 PM EDT

**New Action Items**

[AI] (Keith) will issue a last call for eduPerson edits, beyond EPTID revisions, for inclusion in a forthcoming revision.

[AI] (MarkS) will develop a K12 use case for persistent identifiers.

[AI] (Keith) will develop a Bamboo use case for persistent identifiers.

[AI] (Todd) will develop a discussion starter for the composite attributes discussion and send to the mailing list.

**Carryover Action Items**

[AI] (Keith) will write up the current state of the identifier discussion and apparent consensus, and associated explanatory material, for use by REFEDs.

[AI] (Keith) will edit the previous versions of the SAML Attribute Profiles documents to note that they have been superseded by a newer version.

[AI] (Ann and TomB) will invite the Educause IdM group steering committee to a future MACE-Dir call, to discuss synergies.

[AI] (Keith) will take a first pass at revving http://middleware.internet2.edu/dir/docs/internet2-mace-dir-ldap-group-membership-200507.html in the wiki, then run it by the group for comment, with the goal of perhaps finalizing it in the near future.

[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] (RL "Bob") will query the REFEDs list about whether identifier reassignability is an issue for them esp. in grid environments.

**Discussion**

1. Status of https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedirforum/Non-Authoritative+Sources+Survey (Linked from

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedir/MACE-Dir+Working+Group+Space)

In progress, feedback and comments are encouraged and greatly appreciated.

2. Planning review & approval of Scott Cantor's ePTID V3 Definition

This is approved, and will be included in a forthcoming rev of the eduPerson spec.

3. Supann WG approach to handling composite attributes

See thread: Attributes for appointments, term data, courses, etc.

and Keith's email 7-March-2011 on Composite attributes

Consensus on the call is that this is a topic worth exploring, and Todd agreed to lead the discussion...

It was noted that one of the benefits of this approach is that a simple LDAP filter will suffice, v. expectations of any client behavior, and thus there is no real barrier for multiple apps using it.

What other requirements or conditions would be relevant, to keep this approach easy to use?

It was observed that regardless of what apps want to use this, there are many available XML and JSON libraries available that will work and thus there is no real need to reinvent the wheel. Does is make sense to create structured attribute values?

4. Thread "Persistent identifiers in education"

The driving use cases primarily are coming from the healthcare space, in synchronizing patient records. There are examples of this in other countries, but the question of privacy laws arose as a potentially sticky topic that should be considered in this discussion.

It was noted that there are similar issues in K12, as students move to different schools, and parents need access to their records, both within and between states. School districts don't necessarily have the IdM infrastructure that would enable them to track this, thus this is often done at the state education department level.

Funding agency (e.g., NIH, NSF) grants management apps might also be interested in this.

Presenting this identifier during authentication wouldn't make sense, but rather presenting an attribute describing how you are identified by your IdP, and then accessing a persistent identifier after authenticating.

Developing use cases would be a logical next step. The Bamboo project is addressing some of these needs without this specific attribute. K12 would also be fertile ground for a use case.

[AI] (MarkS) will develop a K12 use case for persistent identifiers.

[AI] (Keith) will develop a Bamboo use case for persistent identifiers.

5. Soliciting content for "Identifier User Cases with Solutions"

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/macedir/Identifier+Use+Cases+with+Solutions

[AI] (Todd) will develop a discussion starter for the composite attributes discussion and send to the mailing list.