Companies integrate applications with OpenSSO Enterprise to implement identity federation in various ways.
OpenSSO Enterprise passes attributes from an Identity Provider application to a Service Provider. In this use case, the Identity Provider passes user attribute value pairs to the Service Provider so the Service Provider can provide services to the user based on those attributes.
OpenSSO Enterprise receives Identity Provider-asserted attributes in a Service Provider application. In this use case the Service Provider verifies the authenticity of the attributes asserted by the Identity Provider. The Service Provider then updates its session with those attributes.
The OpenSSO Enterprise Fedlet quickly enables federation without having to install a full-featured OpenSSO Enterprise sever at the Service Provider. In this use case, the Service Provider can participate in Federation with an Identity Provider that does have the full-featured OpenSSO Enterprise server installed on it.