MIIS 2003 Design Concepts

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

The success of an identity integration solution is closely tied to the planning you do upfront. To properly design and plan an identity integration solution, you must have a complete understanding of how your design decisions affect the data flow in and out of your Microsoft® Identity Integration Server 2003 (MIIS 2003) environment. The key to making good design decisions is to understand the nuances of how the different components in an MIIS environment work together so that the interaction between those components can be utilized to create the most effective and efficient solution. The pertinent information that will assist you in your solution-development effort is covered in the MIIS Design and Planning Guide collection available on the Microsoft Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30436).

The Design Concepts guides contain detailed discussions of specific challenges that are often encountered during the design of MIIS solutions. These documents present some of the most common design issues that are discussed in newsgroups and in e-mail discussion groups. In each document, you will find the following:

  • Detailed explanations of particular design challenges.

  • Possible solutions with best recommendations.

  • Discussions of the pros and cons of potential solutions.

These challenges, and their proposed solutions, have been discovered and documented through numerous discussions with MIIS deployment experts. Once documented, further review cycles have been conducted on each solution by several MIIS deployment experts from both within and outside Microsoft.

MIIS 2003 Design Concepts comprise the following documents:

  • Design Concepts for Reference Attributes

    This document explains how reference attributes are processed by MIIS 2003 for direct attribute mapping scenarios and provides a conceptual explanation of a custom solution for advanced mapped reference attributes. It also includes design recommendations for both direct and advanced mapped attributes.

  • Design Concepts for Correlating Digital Identities

    This document discusses considerations for mapping attributes across different identities and configuring joins based on your business requirements. It introduces the concept of Correlation ID and explains how you can deploy a Correlation ID to establish strong object relationships in your identity integration solution.

  • Design Concepts for Implementing Identity Data Functions

    This document introduces the concept of object-level identity functions (IFunctions) in an identity integration scenario, discusses possible implementation options, and also provides implementation recommendations.

  • Design Concepts for Implementing Reverse Joins

    This document discusses some of the common reverse join implementation approaches for synchronizing identity objects in MIIS 2003. It provides two recommended solutions for implementing reverse joins- reverse joins based on Transient Provisioning and reverse joins based on Auxiliary management agents.

  • Design Concepts for Advanced Solution Components

    The objective of this document is to describe special design issues in MIIS 2003 and to explain how you can use MIIS 2003 architectural elements to address these issues. In this document, you will learn about “process-level attributes” and “conditional metaverse objects” to improve the convergence efficiency of the identity integration process, and how you can use “operational management agents” to isolate metaverse objects requiring special attention. The “auxiliary management agents” section discusses how you can implement a custom reprocessing solution.

While these guides present information about specific design challenges, anyone doing any type of MIIS design work might find them interesting. These solutions can provide insight into design issues not specifically addressed in these documents.

We hope you find these documents useful. If you would like to discuss the content of a document or if you have any questions, feel free to post a message on the MIIS newsgroup (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=68184).