I had a quick chat with Pete and Jason and they brought me up to speed.
After much consideration I think the best way to proceed would be 4.b),
with the more complex features such as IDM and permission management
handled external to DS.
On 27/07/12 08:41, Mark Struberg wrote:
Oki, here we go.
We had a quick chat about where we basically stand today.
This is not intended to be a a 'what shall be' but more a 'what do we have' +
'what do we really need' email.
1.) What we have today:
I've looked at the Security module and what I understand it's pretty powerful
and complex.
There are aprox. 30++ Interfaces which are very flexible but also very hard to get
right. Having lots of flexibility also makes it easy to do things wrong as user.
E.g. IdentityManager which allows to create users. The RoleQuery and the whole
Role management is pretty complete from the API level but I've never seen it used
in such detail in any application yet. Most times there is an additional mapping
role -> rights. And the right is what gets used in the application (e.g. in
rendered= ).
2.) What is available in projects:
In my last 10 projects we never had the choice to define our own login logic.
Some customers had radius, others authenticated against SAP or kerberos. Then
there are some LDAP and we even have a single sign on based on Smalltalk. And
there is absolutely no way to get rid of those! Most of the time you cannot
even create your own users... Of course there is the need for a simple html
based user login for _some_ applications. But this is most times only needed
for green-field projects. Whenever you do projects for a bigger company you
most likely will find some well established SSO in place.
3.) what is needed in those projects:
I did quite some integration already in the past and the only thing which we
did really need was
3.a.) to express some interrest: "current user likes to do actionX"
This can be done via a @Secured interceptor, via @ViewConfig, via @PageBean etc
-> might get provided by DS.
3.b.) to evaluate the "is the current user allowed to do actionX"
Like with JAAS Voters this can be done via a simple Interface which returns a
boolean. This is really similar to what Seam2 had and also what CODI did.
All the evaluation and binding to an existing authorisation and authentication can
be done in this AccessVoter/checkPermission. -> we might provide the Interfaces
in DS. The impl is _always_ up to the user.
4.) what are our options:
4.a.) fully implement our own security manager. This will surely still take
some time as this is a complex topic! Many of the interfaces are ok but there
is not yet an impl behind it. My personal estimation is that we now hit the 15%
line, and a few people already spent a good amount of power for it. So this
will not be finished for the next 5 months I fear.
4.b) implement a simple Voter + @Secured and let the user deal with the rest. In both Seam2 and CODI this turned out to not only be extremely flexible, but it is also rather easy to integrate [1]. We could also provide an additional module which contains a composite component with login userId + pwd fields + a simple backend for it. But just as a small additional module which might optionally be used for easier integration into JSF apps if there is not yet an existing SSO implementation.
LieGrue,
strub
[1]
https://github.com/struberg/lightweightEE/blob/master/gui/src/main/java/de/jaxenter/eesummit/caroline/gui/security/AdminAccessVoter.java#L36
----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Porter <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:03 PM
Subject: IDM impl feedback
T he implementation that's in HEAD right now is incomplete. There are many
methods which are basic IDE generated stubs in multiple classes. I'll hold
off on any feedback until it's complete.
--
Jason Porter
http://lightguard-jp.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/lightguardjp
Software Engineer
Open Source Advocate
Author of Seam Catch - Next Generation Java Exception Handling
PGP key id: 926CCFF5
PGP key available at: keyserver.net, pgp.mit.edu
