Testing Your Service Provider
Service Providers: Testing with Federation Members
Many times, Service Providers would like to test their newly implemented federated service before opening it up to the federation.
There are two common methods for testing. One is to pick a campus or two as initial partners and work with them to get your service going. The other is to run your own IdP.
Partner Campuses
It has been common for a service provider to pick a campus or two as initial partners and work with them to get the service going. In many cases, what works for one campus will work for most others. In cases where the use of attributes might be more complicated – such as the use of entitlements or newly-invented attributes – it helps to get some help from several campuses, particularly those that have been involved in attribute work.
Running an IdP
The best testing method, by far, is to run your own IdP. Many universities are challenged by the problem of providing test accounts; the challenge is even greater when when some kinds of attributes are required, rather than simply setting up a test identity.
Running an IdP for testing purposes is relatively simple and the ability to cook up sample test data is built into the Shibboleth IdP implementation.
You can also do this outside of InCommon, if you prefer, by adding your own metadata to the SP as needed. This method also gives you an easy way to simulate users and attributes from InCommon member schools, because you can control the "scopes" you'll accept from the test IdP.