AARC Architecture WG Area
This is the wiki space of the Working Group in the Architecture Area of the AARC Community and AEGIS. Participation in the working group is open to individuals who are interested in following and contributing to the evolution of the AARC Blueprint Architecture and its supporting Guideline documents. Discussions about the ongoing work of the WG take place in the aarc-architecture mailing list. The group holds a weekly call every other Monday at 14:00 CE(ST)
High-level Objectives
focus on the integration aspects of the AAARC Blueprint Architecture
provide recommendations and guidelines for implementers, service providers and infrastructure operators on implementing scalable and interoperable AAIs across e-infrastructures and scientific communities
work in close collaboration with AEGIS
work on the evolution of the blueprint architecture, with a focus on identity provider / service provider (IdP/SP) proxies, scalable authorisation solutions for multi-service provider environments and other solutions for integrating with R&E federations and cross-sector AAIs
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Active Draft Document
Guidelines
| ID | Title | Summary | Links | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AARC-G056 | AARC profile for expressing community identity attributes | This document defines a profile for expressing the attributes of a researcher’s digital identity. The profile contains a common list of attributes and definitions based on existing standards and best practises in research & education. The attributes include identifiers, profile information, and community attributes such as group membership and role information. | Google doc | FINAL CALL |
| AARC-G080 | AARC Blueprint Architecture 2025 | The AARC Blueprint Architecture (BPA) provides a set of building blocks for software architects and technical decision makers who are designing and implementing access management solutions for international research collaborations. This document describes the evolution of the AARC Blueprint Architecture, starting with a summary of the changes since AARC-BPA-2019. | Google doc (Initial Revision) | IN PROGRESS |
| AARC-G081 | Recommendations for Token Lifetimes | This document provides a short overview over selected types of tokens used to identify and authorise users. We analyse the different properties of tokens and categorise available authorisation patterns to give recommendations about the lifetimes of tokens associated with specific properties and authorisation levels. The document is between policy and architecture working group | FINAL CALL | |
| AARC-G100 | Guidelines for Establishing Trust between AARC-compliant AAI services using OpenID Federation | This specification provides guidance for enabling interaction and establishing trust among AARC-compliant proxies that implement OAuth 2.0 Authorization Servers (AS) and Resource Servers (RS) residing in distinct domains. These interactions are facilitated through trusted third parties referred to as Trust Authorities, which are entities issuing authoritative statements about entities that participate in an identity federation. The federation uses OpenID Federation. This document is intended for operators and implementers of AAI services and defines two trust profiles: G100.1 (Basic Trust Model), specifying the minimum requirements for establishing trust between proxies using OpenID Federation trust chains, and G100.2 (Fine-Grained Trust Model), which extends the basic model with policy-based trust through the use of Trust Marks and metadata policies. | IN PROGRESS |
Informational Documents
| ID | Title | Summary | Links | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AARC-I101 | Verifiable Credentials and Digital Identity Wallets in Research Collaborations | This informational document outlines how Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Digital Identity Wallets—as defined by the W3C Verifiable Credentials model and the European Digital Identity framework (eIDAS 2.0)—relate to AARC-compliant Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructures (AAIs). It summarises key standards, examines how AARC services could act as verifiers or issuers of VCs, and highlights trust and interoperability aspects relevant to research collaborations. The document does not define normative behaviour but provides background for future guidelines and pilot work. | IN PROGRESS |
Upcoming / Inactive Drafts
Guidelines
| ID | Title | Summary | Links | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AARC-G073 | Guidelines for refreshing tokens between proxies | This document explores the refresh token flow in a scenario where client applications interact with resource servers through interconnected OpenID Providers (OIDC). Specifically, it focuses on the case where an AARC-compliant Infrastructure Proxy [AARC-G045] acts as an intermediary between the client and a Community AAI. To address challenges related to refresh token handling in this configuration, the document specifies a secure refresh token flow that leverages introspection to ensure the validity of refresh tokens before issuing new access tokens. The document describes the flows for both obtaining and using refresh tokens. | Google doc | ON HOLD |
| AARC-G079 | AARC Community-based Access Entity Category | This document provides guidelines for using the Community-based Access Entity Category to support the release of attributes to Service Providers that have a proven need to receive a set of community-managed information about their users in order to effectively provide their service to the users. | Google doc | ABANDONED |
| AARC-G059 | Guidelines for expressing affiliation information | The goal of this document is to define how affiliation information should be expressed when transported across AARC BPA-compliant AAIs. Two different types of affiliation have been identified, namely Affiliation within the Home Organisation, such as a university, research institution or private company; and Affiliation within the Community, such as cross-organisation collaborations. Both affiliation types should be communicated to the service providers that rely on affiliation information in order to control access to resources. Will supersede AARC-G025 | Google doc | ON HOLD Waiting for feedback from voPerson schema (see voPerson issue#40) |
| AARC-G060 | A framework for IdP hinting | Google doc | ON HOLD | |
| AARC-G064 | A specification for hinting which IdPs to show in discovery | Google doc | ON HOLD | |
| AARC-G053 | Specification for expressing user authentication via REFEDS R&S and/or Sirtfi compliant authentication providers | Google doc | CONCEPT | |
| AARC-G054 | Specification for expressing authenticating authorities | Google doc | CONCEPT | |
AARC-I028 (was AARC2-JRA1.2B) | Best practices for integrating OpenID Connect / OAuth2 based end services | Capture what OIDC-based services need to understand, which schemes to follow in order to benefit from federated identities, that currently are exclusively in the SAML world. This will probably include pointers to documents that specify mappings between SAML and OIDC expression of attributes, entitlements or claims. OIDC/OAuth2 client registration is covered in AARC-G032 | ON HOLD | |
| AARC-G038 AARC2-JRA1.4C | Best practises for scalable account (de)provisioning of VO members | Best practises for scalable account provisioning, management, and deprovisioning, particularly from the perspective of the standard protocols used to manage accounts (such as LDAP, VOOT, SCIM, etc.) | doc | ON HOLD |
AARC-G032 (was AARC2-JRA1.3B) | Guidelines for registering OIDC Relying Parties in AAIs for international research collaboration | This document describes different ways to accomplish an OpenID Connect client registration, specifically providing guidance for International Research Collaborations that need to implement one of these systems. | ON HOLD | |
AARC-G036 (was AARC2-JRA1.4A) | Roles, responsibilities and security considerations for VOs | DROPPED. Most of the content is now in DJRA1.3; it was proposed to gather the remaining information into a document describing how roles and the requirements on roles be managed (e.g. "there must always be a security contact"); however, we have decided that we will not have enough time to do justice to the topic. Virtual Organisations (VOs) have several roles and responsibilities; some are identified as community responsibilities, and others arise from relations to infrastructures (e.g. security contact, technical contact). Can we minimise the number of places that need this information, in order to improve maintainability and scalability? | ABANDONED | |
AARC-G037 (was AARC2-JRA1.4B) | Guidelines for combining group membership and role information in multi-AA environments | When combining information from several AAs, one needs to consider the different semantics, different levels of assurance, and different purposes of the AAs and their attributes. | ON HOLD | |
AARC-G030 (AARC2-JRA1.2D) | Requirements and Implementations for Authentication Freshness (was: Guidelines for step-up authentication via forced reauthentication) | This document describes mechanisms for forcing a user to perform an additional login (reauthentication) in order to ensure that the user who is accessing a protected resource is the same person who initially authenticated at the start of the session. Forced reauthentication can therefore provide additional protection for sensitive resources. | ABANDONED | |
| AARC2-JRA1.1B | Guidelines for the discovery of authoritative attribute providers across different operational domains | ABANDONED | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.1C | Guidelines for handling user registration and user consent for releasing attributes across different operational domains | CONCEPT | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.1D | Guidelines for federated access to non-web services across different operational domains | CONCEPT | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.3C | Guidelines for AAI interoperability with non-R&E Identity Providers in support of international research collaboration | ABANDONED | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.3D | Guidelines for AAI interoperability with eIDAS Identity Providers in support of international research collaboration | CONCEPT | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.3E | AAI tools & technologies enabling OIDC for international research collaboration | CONCEPT | ||
| AARC2-JRA1.4D | Guidelines for implementing, operating and using VO platforms | it was suggested this incorporate anything from JRA1.4A not included in DJRA1.3 plus guidance on evaluating and selecting a proxy platform. However, as we have too many documents already and not enough time to do them justice, JRA1 have decided to drop this document. However, EOSC Hub is currently (as of March 2019) putting together an evaluation form. It was suggested at the F2F in April 2019 that this document be resurrected? | ABANDONED |