Ok, so in the old days, if you wanted to extend the SQL Membership Provider you just inherited the sql membership provider and provided overrides for the methods you wanted to override. Deploy it as a farm solution to the GAC, add appropriate web.config changes to your ca, application, and sts and you had a custom membership provider that used sql.
I've done that in 2013... now I can authenticate against my membership DB but the only thing that shows in my people picker is the membership provider users as a whole. No roles, no users are being provided. So I either let everyone authenticate, or no one. I checked to make sure that my people picker settings in the web.config contain the wildcard add for my custom sql membership and role providers... no dice.
When I started reading more, I kept getting articles talking about a custom claims infrastructure which is in an entirely different namespace but facilites the claims needed for filling the people picker searches etc.
So yes or no, am I doing it wrong with the the SQL Membership Provider, or is this just not meant to work because it has been depricated by the new custom claims infrastructure?
It just feels like either I am really, really close to a solution and it is just some syntax thing or I just took the wrong road entirely. I know what claims are for, I just think it is a tremendous overkill if the SQL providers do everything I want (save my override for ValidateUser). I don't need any cross site single sign on, and I don't intend to provide authentication services or claim services for user attributes to other farms, sites, applications, etc... All I want is for my SQL roles to show up in the picker. :(
Thanks!