Understanding the User Tier

The user tier consists of administrators and end users who interact with Identity Manager through one of the user interfaces. The main user interface for the product is a web browser, which communicates with Identity Manager over HTTPS. The two browser-based UIs, the administrator user interface and the end-user interface, primarily consist of HTML pages, although some features may use Java applets.

For clarity, only the administrator user interface and the end-user user interface are shown in figure Figure 2–1. Other user interfaces, however, are also located in the user tier. These include the IVR telephone interface, the Identity Manager IDE, the SPML web services interface, and the Identity Manager console.