### Discovery Service

The initial step in accessing identity data is to determine where the information is located. (For example, which identity service holds the principal's credit card information, or which server stores the principal's calendar service.) Typically, there are one or more services on a network that allow other entities to perform an action on identity data. Because clients are not expected to keep track of these services or to know which can be trusted, they require a discovery service. A discovery service is essentially a web service interface for discovery resources. A discovery resource is a registry of resource offerings. A resource offering defines an association between a piece of identity data and the service instance that provides access to that data. A resource identifier is a unique resource identifier (URI) registered with the discovery service that points to a particular discovery resource. When a client sends a request for some type of data, it includes a resource identifier that the OpenSSO Discovery Service uses to locate the web services provider for the requested attributes. The Discovery Service returns a resource offering that contains the information necessary to locate the data.

Note – In order for access to occur, the hosting provider of the Liberty Personal Profile Service needs to be registered with the Discovery Service on behalf of each identity principal.

The following Discovery Service global attributes can be configured for your implementation.

- Provider ID

- Supported Authentication Mechanisms

- Supported Directives

- Policy Evaluation for Discovery Lookup

- Policy Evaluation for Discovery Update

- Authorizer Plug-in Class:

- Entry Handler Plug-in Class:

- Classes for ResourceID Mapper Plug-in

- Authenticate Response Message

- Session Context Statement for Bootstrapping

- Encrypt Name Identifier in Session Context for Bootstrapping

- Implied Resource

- Resource Offerings for Bootstrapping

The following tasks are associated with configuring the Discovery Service:

- To Configure a Resource Offering for Bootstrapping

- To Configure a Service Description