Apply Single-Sign-On to Your Application
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The concept of Distributed Computing has been around for almost a decade; however, Distributed Computing has mainly been confined within the walls of the organization and most importantly, vendor-specific platforms. the topic of my article will touch one aspect of application development which I believe makes some sense to be farmed out to Distributed Computing: Identity Management.
Identity Management: Background
In this ever-evolving world of technology, applications become more complex by the day. Business users are constantly striving to acquire information in a quick, efficient, and easy-to-use manner.
The concept of Distributed Computing has been around for almost a decade; however, Distributed Computing has mainly been confined within the walls of the organization and most importantly, vendor-specific platforms.
In recent years, professional bodies have come together and have worked together with all the major platform vendors to come up with widely-accepted standards. Suddenly, platforms are no longer a major hindrance to communication. The current explosion of bandwidth supply, coupled with the lower cost of utilization, in conjunction with other factors, has also caused blurring of lines and boundaries between Local Area Networks (LANs) and the Wide-Area Networks (WANs). We are now seeing evolution of technology where a single application can span across multiple platforms and transcend physical barriers, parameters and boundaries.
While I don’t want to go into details of what was described above, the topic of my article will touch one aspect of application development which I believe makes some sense to be farmed out to Distributed Computing: Identity Management.
Businesses of today are getting more difficult and complex and span across to other business domains as well. Software Vendors are finding it difficult to meet the requirements as the ways to do business are changing all the time as well. A full enterprise-resource planning suite is hard to build without third party involvement in terms of tools and support. After that, enterprises will demand that what is being deployed must work seamlessly with the other incumbent and/or new applications. One problem is the entry point of an application -- the Sign-on / Log-on Interface.
If an enterprise should deploy a portal for the users to choose and use whichever application the need desires, the question is who holds the user identity. If application A holds the main key to the user database, how would application B and C communicate with it seamlessly? Of course, with the use of widely-adopted web services and XML, the next question would be are Application A, B and C built in a way where identity management is loosely-coupled in their application architecture? If so, who should hold the key, what is to be kept in this database and very importantly, who manages it?
Next: Sign-On: LDAP as the Key >>
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