February 2010 Archives

Pros and Cons of WIF

By
Travis Spencer
on February 18, 2010 3:36 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
I got a message from Sidar Ok on Twitter the other day asking about the pros and cons of Windows Identity Foundation (WIF).  I put together the following list when replying to him, but wanted to share it with the community as well

Pros
  • Makes it much simpler to implement an STS then it is with just .NET and WCF
  • Unified programming model across multiple platforms including WCF and ASP.NET
  • Support for WS-Trust
  • Support for WS-Federation
  • Support for SAML 1.1 and 2 tokens
  • Large amount of docs, books, mags, blogs, docs and community relative to its age
  • Good tool support (e.g., Visual Studio and and FedUtil)
Cons
  • No support for SAML 1.1 or 2 protocols
  • Can't be installed on Windows XP
  • Unpolished support for other platforms (e.g, Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, etc.)
Did I miss any?  Do you disagree?  Which of those benefits are the most compelling to you and your company?  Which of those drawbacks are the biggest hindrances to your adoption?  Let me know in a comment below or get in touch with me directly.