Windows Identity Foundation

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is a Microsoft software framework for building identity-aware applications.[1] It provides APIs for building ASP.NET or WCF based security token services as well as tools for building claims-aware and federation capable applications.[2][3]

Windows Identity Foundation is supported on IIS 6/Windows Server 2003, IIS 7/Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. Version 1.0 shipped as a standalone product, but the product is now included as a part of Microsoft .NET Framework v4.5.[4][2]

Major features

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WIF has the following major features:[5]

  • It allows developers to build claims-aware applications by providing a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that help developers write code to make access decisions to applications based on claims.
  • It provides templates to help developers get started building claims-aware applications.
  • It provides utilities that facilitate creation of a trust relationship between a claims-aware application (sometimes referred to as a Relying on Party application, or RP), and a Security Token Service (STS).
  • It provides a set of ASP.NET controls that help developers create web pages in claims-aware applications.
  • It includes a utility that helps developers translate between claims and NT tokens, so that claims-aware applications can be used to access resources that require NT-Token based identity.
  • It includes functionality that allows identities to be maintained across multiple service boundaries, and allows delegation of claims.
  • It provides tools to help developers build custom security token services using ASP.NET or WCF.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Improve Authentication with Windows Identity Foundation -- Visual Studio Magazine
  2. ^ a b Windows Identity Foundation Now Included in .NET 4.5
  3. ^ What is claims-based identity? - Definition from WhatIs.com
  4. ^ "Windows Identity Foundation 4.5 Overview". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  5. ^ Microsoft Corporation. "What is Windows Identity Foundation?". Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved August 2, 2011.
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