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minLevel2

MDUI Guidance for Federation operators. May 2012

  • Consider making your guidance re-enforcing existing specifications and recommendations.

  • Ensure that your requirements and recommendations around MDUI are documented.

  • Update the reference pages on Federation Recommendations as required (this task will not be done centrally).

  • Review other federation’s requirements for inconsistencies with your own.

  • Note on the REFEDS mailing list issues of incompatibility.

  • For federations considering starting to adopt MDUI: It was noted at the meeting at Arlington in March 2012 that if your policy and scale allows it, it is considerably easier to make the changes on behalf of entities than it is to persuade entities to submit changes.

 Only use normative language from RFC2119 where appropriate. Note in particular section 6.   

Requirements and Recommendations

When reviewing or describing the MDUI requirements it is important to be clear about the importance of the recommendation:

 

1. A requirement may be mandatory. In this situation non conforming entities will not be inter- federable. Federations imposing such restrictions and federations not populating this field both need to be aware that this is a barrier to inter-federation. Normative language from RFC2119 may be appropriate in this situation.

An example might be:

  •   All SP’s MUST have an mdui:DisplayName.
 

2. A recommendation may be for aesthetic reasons. This is not a barrier to interoperability. Normative language for such recommendations is not appropriate and should be avoided. Examples:

  •  mdui:DisplayName should be less than 32 characters [and longer names may be shortened].
  •  mdui:Logos should be of a given size [but will be scaled appropriately]
  •  mdui:Logos should have a specific aspect ratio.

3. A recommendation may be functional. In this case non-conforming data may not be used by the federation with the restriction. This does not mean that such elements in other federations (including, one assumes, the entities owning federation) is inappropriate or should be suppressed. Normative language for such recommendations is not appropriate and should be avoided. For instance: 

  • Logos should have a certain minimum size [logos of less than a certain size will be ignored.]

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