Security/identity · 2006-10-03

SAML Basics, now with cartoon speech bubbles

Paul beat me to it — announcing my newly updated SAML Basics slides before I got off my butt and did it myself. I’ll swallow my pride and just thank him for the kind words…

I’ve been doing talks and tutorials on SAML since 2001, and having tried out this latest material on my XML Summer School attendees, I think it’s really strong now. I feel like I’ve finally got a better handle on explaining federation and how SAML can help you achieve it. We could really go to town with the speech bubbles, for example, using them to explain how to extend SAML to add your own kinds of statements, or describing the different constraints and interpretations that overlay an assertion depending on the profile context.

(I’m not sure what trouble Paul had seeing the animation in the source file, but I know that in OpenOffice.org you start the slide show and then space-bar through it; doing a page-down will skip any animation. If you want to see a flattened-out version, there’s always the PDF.)

UPDATE: I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank Paul and JeffH for their comments on this latest version.