WAS v8.5 > Develop applications > Develop security > Develop extensions to the WebSphere security infrastructure

Develop stand-alone custom registries

This development provides considerable flexibility in adapting WebSphere Application Server security to various environments where some notion of a user registry, other than LDAP or Local OS, already exists in the operational environment.

WAS security supports the use of stand-alone custom registries in addition to the local operating system registry, stand-alone LDAP registries, and federated repositories for authentication and authorization purposes. A stand-alone custom-implemented registry uses the UserRegistry Java interface as provided by WAS. A stand-alone custom-implemented registry can support virtually any type or notion of an accounts repository from a relational database, flat file, and so on.

Implementing a stand-alone custom registry is a software development effort. Implement the methods that are defined in the com.ibm.websphere.security.UserRegistry interface to make calls to the appropriate registry to obtain user and group information. The interface defines a general set of methods for encapsulating a wide variety of registries. We can configure a stand-alone custom registry as the selected repository when configuring WAS security on the Global security panel.

In WAS v8.5, verify your implementation of the stand-alone custom registry does not depend on any WAS components such as data sources, EJB and JNDI. We can not have this dependency because security is initialized and enabled prior to most of the other WAS components during startup. If your previous implementation used these components, make a change that eliminates the dependency. For example, if your previous implementation used data sources to connect to a database, instead use the JDBC java.sql.DriverManager interface to connect to the database.

If your previous implementation uses data sources to connect to a database, change the implementation to use Java database connectivity (JDBC) connections.

1. Implement all the methods in the interface except for the CreateCredential method, which is implemented by WAS. FileRegistrySample.java file is provided for reference.

   The sample provided is intended to familiarize you with this feature. Do not use this sample in an actual production environment.

2. Build your implementation.

   To compile your code, you need the app_server_root/plugins/com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar and the app_server_root/plugins/com.ibm.ws.security.crypto.jar files in your class path. For example:
   

   app_server_root/java/bin/javac -classpath 
   app_server_root/plugins/com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar;
   app_server_root/plugins/com.ibm.ws.security.crypto.jar your_implementation_file.java

   
   

   app_server_root\java\bin\javac -classpath 
   app_server_root\plugins\com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar:
   app_server_root\plugins\com.ibm.ws.security.crypto.jar your_implementation_file.java

3. Copy the class files that are generated in the previous step to the product class path.

   The preferred location is the following directory:

   • %install_root%/lib/ext

     %install_root%\lib\ext

   directory. Copy these class files to all of the product process class paths.

4. To configure your implementation using the dmgr console, follow the steps in topics about configuring stand-alone custom registries. This step is required to implement custom user registries.

Example

Viewing stand-alone custom registries.

Use these links to view registry examples.

A stand-alone custom registry is a customer-implemented registry that implements the UserRegistry Java interface, as provided by WAS. A custom-implemented registry can support virtually any type or form of an accounts repository from a relational database, flat file, and so on. The custom registry provides considerable flexibility in adapting WAS security to various environments where some form of a registry, other than a federated repository, LDAP registry, or local operating system registry, already exist in the operational environment.

To view a sample stand-alone custom registry, refer to the following files:

• FileRegistrySample.java file
• users.props file
• groups.props file

If you enable security, verify you complete the remaining steps:

1. Save and synchronize the configuration and restart all of the servers.
2. Try accessing some J2EE resources to verify the custom registry implementation is correct.

Subtopics

• Result.java file
  This module is used by user registries in WAS when calling the getUsers and getGroups methods. The user registries use this method to set the list of users and groups and to indicate if more users and groups in the user registry exist than requested.
• UserRegistry.java files
  The following file is a custom property used with a custom user registry.
• Result.java file
  This module is used by user registries in WAS when calling the getUsers and getGroups methods. The user registries use this method to set the list of users and groups and to indicate if more users and groups in the user registry exist than requested.
• UserRegistry.java files
  The following file is a custom property used with a custom user registry.

Related

Develop extensions to the WebSphere security infrastructure
Configure stand-alone custom registries

Reference:

UserRegistry.java files
FileRegistrySample.java file
Stand-alone custom registry settings
users.props file
groups.props file

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