摘要 |
The invention provides an affiliation within a single sign-on system, which affiliation comprises a group of service providers that have chosen to act as a single entity on a network from the point of view of authentication, federation, and authorization. This type of entity is used to implement functionality within a portal site, such as the Yahoo (see http://www.yahoo.com) portal with a Travelocity (see http://www.travelocity.com/) travel section that acts as part of Yahoo and not as part of Travelocity. In the preferred embodiment, there is an owner of the affiliation that is responsible for maintaining a list that shows which service providers are members of the affiliation, as well as any control structure or meta-data associated with the affiliation. Each affiliation must have an identifier that is unique within the single sign-on system in which the affiliation is defined. User actions associated with the affiliation apply to all entities within the affiliation.
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