Simple WebSphere authentication mechanism

The Simple WebSphere authentication mechanism (SWAM) is intended for simple, non-distributed, single appserver run-time environments. The single appserver restriction is due to the fact that SWAM does not support forwardable credentials. If a servlet or enterprise bean in appserver process 1, invokes a remote method on an enterprise bean living in another appserver process 2, the identity of the caller identity in process 1 is not transmitted to server process 2. What is transmitted is an unauthenticated credential, which, depending on the security permissions configured on the EJB methods, can cause authorization failures.

Since SWAM is intended for a single appserver process, single signon (SSO) is not supported.

The SWAM authentication mechanism is suitable for simple environments, software development environments, or other environments that do not require a distributed security solution.

 

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