Federation Security Services Guide › Identify Service Providers for a SAML 2.0 Identity Provider › Configure Single Sign-on for SAML 2.0 › Define Indexed Endpoints for Different Single Sign-on Bindings

Define Indexed Endpoints for Different Single Sign-on Bindings

Federation Security Services offers you the ability to configure indexed endpoints. An indexed endpoint is the site where assertions are consumed. In the context of SiteMinder, this endpoint is the Service Provider where the Assertion Consumer Service resides.

Each endpoint you configure is assigned a unique index value, instead of an single, explicit reference to an Assertion Consumer Service URL. The assigned index is added to a Service Provider's request for an assertion that it sends to the Identity Provider.

You can configure indexed endpoints for a SiteMinder Service Provider that has a federated relationship with a third party Identity Provider that supports indexed endpoints. You may also want to configure different protocol bindings (artifact vs. POST) for the Assertion Consumer Service by assigning more than one endpoint to the service.

Note: If your federated network contains a mix of SiteMinder versions, for example, the Service Provider is version 6.0 SP 5 and the Identity Provider is version 6.0 SP 6, you cannot configure indexed endpoints. Simply configure only one Assertion Consumer Service for both HTTP bindings.

The following figure shows a network that benefits from indexed endpoints.