Autograph is driven by Service Descriptions contained in the Federation metadata. These Service Descriptions related to a Service Provider and contain one or more Service Offerings. Each Service Offering describes an aspect of the Service Provider that the end user will be able to access when that Service Offering is enabled. Service Offerings are enabled by releasing the attributes that are required by that Service Offering. Service Offerings may also advertise optional attributes. These are attributes that the Service Provider will make use of if provided, but access will still be available if they are not released. If an end user is unable to satisfy a Service Offering by releasing all of the required attributes the Service Offering will not appear in Autograph. An attribute cannot be released by a user if the user has no value for that attribute or the attribute has been blocked by the IdP administrator. It is also possible that an end user's attribute will not satisfy a service offering if that attribute is required to have a specific value rather than "any value".

-- BrucLiong - 28 May 2009
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