Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Programming Interfaces

Authenticating user identities

Authentication is the process of verifying a user’s identity. OpenEdge provides support for two basic mechanisms to authenticate user identities (user IDs):

The OpenEdge internal authentication system (_User table).
External authentication systems.

The OpenEdge internal authentication system uses the _User table provided by every OpenEdge RDBMS to store user IDs and passwords. OpenEdge provides 4GL elements and options to authenticate input user IDs against the values stored in this table.

The result of authenticating a user ID using OpenEdge internal authentication automatically assigns a database connection ID for the connected database. Thus, the OpenEdge internal authentication system provides automatic user identity management for a given database. For more information on database connection IDs, see the "Managing identities" section.

An external authentication system can consist of any mechanism that you choose to authenticate user IDs and that you can implement from within the Progress 4GL. It can be as simple as a user table that you control and maintain or as complex as an industry-standard authentication system, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), to which you provide a 4GL-based interface.

The result of authenticating a user ID using an external authentication system depends entirely on how your application supports identity management. First and foremost, you can use an externally authenticated user ID as a Progress session ID, independent of database connections, to authorize access to your own application features. However, you can also use an externally authenticated user ID to set a database connection ID. For more information on user identities and for some examples of using external authentication systems, see the "Managing identities" section.

The following sections describe the basic requirements for authenticating user IDs and making use of the in Progress 4GL applications:

Specifying OpenEdge internal user IDs and passwords
Authenticating OpenEdge internal user IDs and passwords
Using externally-authenticated user IDs and passwords