LiveLink authentication from Windows clients using web services 1

[pholpar]

Hi,

I am rather new into LiveLink and its web services.

I got the task to integrate an ASP.NET 3.5 based web application to LiveLink document management using WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and LiveLink web services.

I have issues with the authentication.

The clients run Internet Explorer 6 / 7 browser on Windows XP. Users are member of an Active Directory domain and Windows integrated authentication is used on IIS 6 web server (Windows Server 2003).

I see that the Authentication web service has several options for client authentication, but none of them seems to be perfect for me.

AuthenticateUser requires the user password. That I would not like to ask from the users.

ImpersonateUser requires only the user name, but it does not work for me, it throws an "Invalid username/password specified" exception.

I could store the user or application name and the password (of course encrypted) in config, and use them in AuthenticateUser or AuthenticateApplication, but in this case I'm afraid, the inforamtion about the user who uploaded the document will be lost.

From my former web developer experience I know that I cannot pass the identity of the original user from client through the web server to a third computer (LiveLink server in this case) unless Kerberos is implemented because of the double hops issue.

I would like to ask you what is the best practice for this kind of application.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Peter

 

[ggriffit]

Peter,
The post at

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll?func=ll&objId=15091717&objAction=view

indicates that Livelink WebServices does support SSO.

Greg Griffiths
Livelink Certified Developer & ECM Global Star Champion 2005 & 2006

http://www.greggriffiths.org/livelink/

 

[prantlf]

If you want to get the impersonation running, first you have to login (call AuthenticateUser) as a user who is allowed to impersonate someone else - Admin, for example. Then call ImpersonateUser with the user you want to perform the operation as. But you have to store the Admin's password in some secure store.

Greg's post is about Enterprise Library Services (ELS, EL WS), not about Livelink Enterprise Web Services (EWS, LES WS). (Enterprise Library was originally a different product and it now undergoes a tighter integration with the Livelink.) I was able to find out that SSO is documented for ELS but not for EWS. But it is supported by Runtime Core Services (RCS) which can be installed on Livelink.

You can ask on OTDN (

https://knowledge.opentext.com/go/otdn)

if SSO is suported for the EWS or really only for ELS.

--- Ferda

--- Ferdinand Prantl

 

[pholpar]

Hi Ferda,

Thanks for your valuable reply. In Friday evening myself found this approach based on an SDK sample and API documentation, but since I have no admin credentials I was not able to test it.

Your reply was helpful since it confirmed my theory.

Greg, I do not have access to the KnowledgeBase, but probably implementing SSO is not the best choice for us anyway. Thanks for your reply too!

Peter