Overview¶

Raven can be used to authenticate current members of the University.

We currently offer two authentication protocols: OAuth2 and SAML 2.0.

This documentation provides hands-on guides for configuring Wordpress and the Apache web-server to use Raven for sign in along with some general guidance on how to use Raven OAuth2 and Raven SAML 2.0.

History¶

The Raven service was created in 2004 and made use of a University of Cambridge-specific protocol for authentication on the web. In 2007, Raven SAML 2.0 was launched allowing standards-based authentication to members of the UK Access Management Federation and to University websites. In 2019, Raven OAuth2 was enabled given websites in the University a choice of two standard authentication protocols.

Protocol comparison¶

The following table shows which sets of users are supported by the current Raven protocols.

This documentation¶

This documentation is hosted in a project on the University Developers' Hub. If you find any errors please raise an issue in the project.

Contributions are also welcome for this documentation. We're especially interested in documentation covering different products and web application frameworks.

Generally we prefer it if you could open an issue before writing anything to give us a heads up on what you intend to contribute. That way we can provide some guidance on whether it's the sort of thing we're looking for and how to proceed.