An irrefutable argument

Scott Cantor from Ohio State University posted this comment to my recent piece on claims:

The question of whether a SAML assertion should have been named a claim has come up before, and I always felt the real problem was that the likely pronunciation of SCML doesn't suggest confidence in the speaker. 😉

Now who can argue with this?

Scott is a great engineer and is not only the architect of Shibboleth (which is a very forward thinking system I want to write about going forward) but also one of the main editors of the SAML 2.0 spec.

Anyway, I want everyone to know that my use of the word claim is NOT an attack on SAML's name or documents. I myself, having long worked with X.500 and LDAP, used the words “Attribute Value Assertion” for many years and don't intend to write any letters of apology about it. It's just that I now think a word meaning “an assertion about which there is doubt” goes right to the center of issues I hope everyone will think about. So I'll be employing the “claim” word for a while as an adjunt to “assertion”.

By the way, Scott also shared news about some very hush hush futures: A forthcoming XSLT transformation is planned to transform SAML assertions into 18th century proclamations.

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Kim Cameron

Work on identity.