WebSphere Portal Server and Authentication

[Michael H]

I'm a WebSphere guy and new to JDE. I am confused over the documentation for the SSO between the Collaborative Portal and the EnterpriseOne application. It is described in the PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne Tools 8.95 PeopleBook: Security Administration as follows:

<ul type="square"> [*]The user signs in to PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne Collaborative Portal through a web browser using an PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne user ID and password.
[*]The system sends the user ID and password to the Collaborative Portal.
[*]Collaborative Portal authenticates the user ID and password against either LDAP, PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne tables, or WebSphere security.
[*]A token is generated for the user ID.
[/list]
I'm confused over this sequence of events. I would expect the security challenge and authentication to come from WebSphere. WebSphere would then (normally) use LDAP to authenticate.

A couple of questions:
<ul type="square">[*]How do you tell JDE to use WebSphere for security and is this the default setting?
[*]If WebSphere performs the authentication, does the Collaborative portal still generate a JDE Token (presumably it does - otherwise it wouldn't work)?
[/list]

Many thanks!

 

[JoseDPhillips]

Mike,

I could answer all of your questions, however, it would take me a significant amount of time to do so. Instead, go to the customer connection website and download the peoplebook entitled: 8.96 Security Administration Guide. This guide provides a very good overview of security and how it works with the portal. Good luck.

 

[Michael H]

Jose, thanks for the pointer to the doco!

However, after reviewing this updated PeopleBook and I am still confused. I can see how to configure E1 to use LDAP or JDE tables for authentication. But the doco states on p144 - [ QUOTE ]
JD Edwards Collaborative Portal authenticates the user ID and password against either LDAP, JD Edwards
EnterpriseOne tables, or WebSphere security

[/ QUOTE ]
Assuming that WebSphere Portal = Collaborative Portal, I can't understand this statement. WebSphere Portal always uses WebSphere security for authentication and it does not natively support JDE E1 tables as a user registry (normally we would use LDAP). Furthermore, I can't find anywhere in the doco that says how to configure the Collaborative Portal to use WebSphere security as the authentication mechanism.

Do you have any idea how this statement should be interpreted?

The reason why I'm trying to understand this is that I intend to set up a client-side SSO solution. This involves customising the WebSphere security so that the user is automatically logged into the portal and there is no userid/password challenge. If I do this will the JDE E1 portlets continue to create the authenticate token and perform SSO within the JDE domain (assuming they have been configured in the correct manner)?

Any clarifications would be greatly appreciated...

 

[Michael H]

Just to qualify my previous statement - WebSphere Portal Server doesn't always use WAS Security. If WebSphere global security is disabled then the portal will look in whatever user registry that it is configured to use. Disabling security is not a normal production configuration though...