As you plan your deployment, consider the following assumptions, dependencies, and constraints to determine if your environment is appropriate for using the ID-WSF.
The fundamental difference between ID-WSF and generic web services is that the ID-WSF defines a security framework around user identity. The ID-WSF allows an end user to register his service offerings with their trusted trust authorities. Generic web services advertise their offerings through either a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) file or by the Enterprise Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registry. These use cases are driven through Liberty ID-WSF and thus have a dependency on other Liberty protocols such as ID-FF and SAMLv2.
The majority of identity web services are deployed in the Mobile Communications industry. For server-side web service providers OpenSSO Enterprise provides a comprehensive solution for ID-WSF. However, solutions for Liberty enabled clients do not provide the same degree of coverage. For example, the Client SDK is not J2ME-compatible and will not work with mobile devices that typically use Midlets to invoke Identity Web Services. Also, the OpenSSO Enterprise ID-WSF does not implement all profiles for the Liberty-enabled user agent or device (LUAD) clients.