SDSS and UKERNA working together on the JISC Production Federation
Posted on Tuesday, 29 November 2005
The JISC announced at the Core Middleware Programme meeting on 14-15 November that UKERNA had agreed to run the JISC Production Federation and that SDSS and UKERNA would be working together to launch it (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/uk-fed.ppt).
SDSS Documents
Posted on Wednesday, 23 November 2005
Four new documents have recently been added to the SDSS Document Register. Three of the documents were prepared for the JISC Core Middleware meeting at Windermere (14-15 Nov 2005). The fourth document, "UK Federation Technical and Policy Notes" (latest version 20 December 2005), contains outline proposals covering technical, policy and organisational issues developed for SDSS and recommended for the UK federation.
University of Exeter
Posted on Wednesday, 26 October 2005
The University of Exeter has joined the SDSS federation as an institutional identity provider.
Project SWISh
Posted on Friday, 21 October 2005
The early adopter Project SWISh, based at the University of Exeter, has joined the SDSS federation as an Identity Provider.
Zope-based VLE service at Newcastle
Posted on Monday, 10 October 2005
As part of the IAMSECT project, the University of Newcastle Medical Faculty has added a VLE service to the SDSS federation. The service, Medical Clinical Education Learning Support Environment, based on the Zope content management framework, is already in use by more than 100 staff and postgraduate students.
Bruno: Blackboard development server at Durham
Posted on Monday, 10 October 2005
As part of the IAMSECT project, Durham University has added bruno, a Blackboard development server, to the SDSS federation.
St. George's University of London
Posted on Wednesday, 28 September 2005
St. George's University of London (a medical school) has become the latest institutional identity provider within the SDSS federation.
More Shibboleth-Enabled EDINA Services
Posted on Wednesday, 28 September 2005
Two further EDINA services now offer Shibboleth access to subscribed institutions that are members of the SDSS federation: Index to The Times, containing bibliographic references from The Times newspaper from 1790 to 1980, and AGDEX, containing bibliographic references for farming and agricultural periodicals.
Zetoc Alert
Posted on Friday, 16 September 2005
A new service, Zetoc Alert, has been added by MIMAS to SDSS. This provides alert information to Zetoc Search, The British Library Electronic Table of Contents.
University of Durham
Posted on Friday, 2 September 2005
The University of Durham recently joined SDSS as an institutional identity provider.
Shibboleth vsn 1.3
Posted on Wednesday, 24 August 2005
The most recent version of the Shibboleth software, vsn 1.3, was released on 26th July 2005. The SDSS federation policy with respect to use of Shibboleth version 1.3 is given here.
DyVOSE project
Posted on Wednesday, 24 August 2005
The DyVOSE project has joined SDSS. The intention of this two-year JISC-funded project is to explore the establishment of scalable Virtual Organisations (VOs) in the domain of e-Science education. The work entails the extension of the PERMIS infrastructure to enable Attribute Certificates to be issued to students.
UK Data Archive
Posted on Tuesday, 19 July 2005
The SAFARI UKDA project at the UK Data Archive has joined SDSS as part of its work to develop Shibbolized access to the UKDA's Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS), Collection of Historical Censuses (CHCC) and Census Registration Service. The registration service gives users shared one-stop registration for access to different census resources distributed over multiple hosting sites, including MIMAS and EDINA.
University of the Highlands and Islands (Guanxi)
Posted on Friday, 15 July 2005
The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) has joined SDSS as an institutional identity provider. The identity provider software being used is the Bodington VLE, enhanced with Shibboleth IdP functionality by the Guanxi project at UHI.
Kidderminster College joins SDSS
Posted on Friday, 15 July 2005
The KC-ROLO project (Kidderminster College Repository of Learning Objects) is investigating long-term sharing of institutional learning resource objects. Currently they operate a bespoke federation with their project partners, RSC West Midlands and University College Worcester. The aim in joining SDSS is to investigate whether a sub-federation within a larger federation like SDSS can provide the same functionality while removing the burden of federation administration.
JISC Joint Programme Meeting
Posted on Monday, 11 July 2005
SDSS staff gave a presentation on the current status of EDINA service conversion to Shibboleth at the JISC Joint Programme Meeting in Cambridge (7-8 July 2005). The PowerPoint presentation can be downloaded from the SDSS document register. A poster was also presented at the conference.
University of Leeds
Posted on Monday, 4 July 2005
The University of Leeds has joined SDSS as an institutional identity provider. This work is being done as part of the GILEAD Core Middleware Project at Leeds.
Thawte Certificates
Posted on Monday, 4 July 2005
Thawte SSL web server certificates have now been qualified for use within the SDSS federation, for authenticating both identity providers and service providers. This is in addition to continuing support for both GlobalSign ? and SDSS internal certificates. See the GetCertificate page for more details.
MIMAS Landmap Available as Shibboleth Target
Posted on Wednesday, 15 June 2005
The JISC funded Landmap Project, developed by MIMAS and University College London Dept. of Geomatic Engineering and other project partners, provides orthorectified satellite image mosaics of Landsat, SPOT and ERS radar data and a high resolution Digital Elevation Model for the British Isles. It is now available via Shibboleth to subscribing institutions that are also members of the SDSS federation.
Education Image Gallery available as Shibboleth target
Posted on Wednesday, 1 June 2005
Education Image Gallery is now available as an EDINA Shibboleth target. It is linked from the SDSS home page at SDSS
JISC Core Middleware Programme Meeting
Posted on Friday, 20 May 2005
This meeting brought together technical development projects with Shibboleth early adopters. PowerPoint ? files are available for the two presentations given by SDSS staff, one on the SDSS federation itself, the other on progress in converting EDINA's national services to Shibboleth. These files can also be downloaded from the SDSS document register.
Networkshop 2005 Presentation
Posted on Tuesday, 5 April 2005
On 23 March 2005, a member of the SDSS team gave a presentation at Networkshop 33 on federated identity with Shibboleth, its benefits and the status of the SDSS project. The PowerPoint file is now available from the SDSS document register.
Zetoc Search at MIMAS Joins SDSS
Posted on Friday, 1 April 2005
Zetoc Search provides access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents database of over 15 million article titles derived from the 20,000 most important research journals in the world. MIMAS have now made Zetoc accessible via Shibboleth to qualifying members of the SDSS federation.
Initial Attribute Directory
Posted on Friday, 25 February 2005
An initial attribute directory has been added to this web site, listing the attributes used by the SDSS target services we are aware of and describing how an identity provider can generate and release them.
Internet2 Shibboleth Wiki Joins SDSS
Posted on Friday, 25 February 2005
Scott Cantor has kindly made the Internet2 Shibboleth Wiki editable by users of SDSS identity providers that release the eduPersonPrincipalName attribute (from which the Wiki account name is located).
GlobalSign Target Certificates
Posted on Tuesday, 22 February 2005
Previously, GlobalSign's X.509 certificates were unsuitable for use as Shibboleth service provider (target SHAR) certificates, so these had to be issued by the SDSS project's internal CA. GlobalSign has been working on this issue, assisted by the SDSS project, since September 2004 and on 27 January 2005 released a revised certificate profile that resolved the issue. After testing of the new profile by the SDSS team, the procedure for new service providers joining the SDSS federation has been updated to specify GlobalSign rather than SDSS certificates. Note that GlobalSign certificates issued before 27 January 2005 cannot be used as service provider (target) certificates.
MIMAS
Posted on Monday, 21 February 2005
MIMAS is now running an SDSS identity provider (origin) for its staff. This is part of the JISC Core Middleware Infrastructure work.
Education Media On-Line (EMOL)
Posted on Monday, 21 February 2005
Education Media On-Line (EMOL) is an EDINA-hosted service of film and video for download to UK HE and FE. Users from any subscribing institution that is also a member of SDSS can now log in from that institution's local Shibboleth identity provider.
SDSS Development Federation launch
Posted on Tuesday, 1 February 2005
The SDSS federation has now completed beta testing and all Core Middleware projects are invited to register for membership. Some resources in the JISC Information Environment have already been made available, and many more will be added over the next few months.