[mdx] Metadata Retrieval From Aggregate Protocol

[Chad La Joie]

Josh Howlett wrote:
> Chad, 
> 
> Just a couple of comments from me:
> 
>> Retrieval of Descriptor Collection (RDC) Operation:
>>    - URL Path Format 'entity-collection/{id}
> 
> First, can you expand on what you mean by 'collection'?

To the protocol the exact meaning of collection, is defined only as a 
collection of entity descriptors (i.e. an EntitiesDescriptor).  How 
exactly the aggregate defines/creates such collections is, of course, 
out of scope for the protocol.  However, the use case I had in mind were 
the various "community" cases you talked.

You talked before about a "WebSSO" community.  So, assuming a collection 
called 'websso' the reflected this community you would pull it from the 
aggregate by accessing a URL like 
'http://example.org/aggregationEngine/entity-collection/websso'.

> Secondly, did you have a time in mind for broaching this protocol with
> the broader community? I have purely selfish interests in mind, as I
> would like to proceed with the eduGAIN MDS re-implementation ASAP. Sorry
> to be so mercenary :-)

Well, before I went any further I was hoping to get some general 
feedback from this group.  Then, once people seemed reasonably okay with 
it I was just going to write it up in a nicer fashion and then we could 
make it available to whomever wanted to look at it.

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Chad La Joie, Software Engineer, Net Services
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