Saml sequence diagram how to#

So, letвЂ™s assume the identity provider has been configured to post the assertion to the service provider. Alternatively, the identity provider could be configured to redirect back to the service provider with all the assertion information in the redirect URL.В Though HTTP redirect might work great for short SAML assertions, the length of a redirect URL is limited, making this approach unreliable for longer responses. There are a couple options for doing this.В The identity provider could post back to the service provider with the assertion as the body. Now that the identity provider has verified JimmyвЂ™s credentials and created a session for him, it needs to send a SAML assertion indicating success back to the soup site.the soup site) is associated with JimmyвЂ™s session. Because Jimmy does not yet have an authenticated session with the identity provider, he is prompted for his credentials.В The identity provider looks up JimmyвЂ™s credentials and then creates a session for him.В The service provider initiating the request (i.e.The identity provider verifies the authentication request from the soup site.He is not yet logged in, so he does not have a session on the soup site.В The soup site is configured with an identity provider URL.В It uses that URL to redirect the user to the identity provider.

Jimmy tries to visit the soup recipe site.

Jimmy (the user) gets home from work and desperately wants a bowl of warm soup.

LetвЂ™s jump ahead and assume the soup & sandwich websites are set up to use a SAML identity provider.В What would the user sign-on process look like? The SAML Login Flow Initial SAML login flow This is defined as a вЂњperson who makes use of a system and its resources for any reason.вЂќВ In our case, this would be a hungry person who needs those soup and sandwich recipes. In this post, weвЂ™ll talk about two service providers that hook up to the same identity provider: one is a website with soup recipes, and one is a website with sandwich recipes (these are super-secret family recipes, so we want the user to have to authenticate before seeing them).В Since the service providers share an identity provider, a user will be able to log in to both sites with the same username/password. OASIS defines the service provider as вЂњa system entity where the system entity provides services.вЂќВ ThatвЂ™s a broad definition, but for good reasonвЂ“the service provider can be any sort of application needing authentication. Key Players The identity providerДЄccording to the OASIS glossary, an identity provider вЂњcreates, maintains, and managesвЂќ identity information and provides authentication to other service providers.В The identity provider is responsible for looking up a user given their login credentials. SAML is one option for implementing single sign-on.В If you would like to know how SAML compares to other single sign-on options, check out this post on single sign-on protocols. From then on out, if a service provider sends a user to the identity provider to be authenticated, the identity provider already has the session for the user and does not need to ask the user for credentials. When a user logs in the first time, the identity provider creates a session for that user. With single sign-on, a user can enter their credentials once and then get access to many different systems sharing the same identity prover.В The user doesnвЂ™t need to keep track of multiple usernames and passwords to use systems that are related to each other. If you happen to be working with Rails, I suggest you check out my coworkerвЂ™s post on integrating SAML with Rails.

Saml sequence diagram how to#

This post will focus on integrating with the SAML protocol-not how to integrate with SAML on a specific platform. In this post, IвЂ™ll scratch the surface of SAML 2.0 by summarizing the main things I learned when setting up SAML authentication for our application.

The protocol is complex (the core document alone is 86 pages) and has a wide range of capabilities. SAML 2.0 is an authentication protocol, an agreed-upon way to transfer authentication information between parties.В It was approved as an OASIS standard in 2005, and there are SAML Protocol DocumentsВ with details about the protocol.