Java EE/Servlet-Based Authentication and Authorization

, In addition to providing ACL-based authentication, Web Server also implements the security model defined in the Java EE 1.4 specification to provide several features that help you develop and deploy secure Java web applications.

A typical Java EE-based web application consists of the following parts, access to any or all of which can be restricted:

• Servlets

• JavaServer Pages (JSP) components

• HTML documents

• Miscellaneous resources, such as image files and compressed archives

The Java EE servlet-based access control infrastructure relies on the use of security realms. When a user tries to access the main page of an application through a web browser, the web container prompts for the user's credential information. The container then passes the information for verification to the realm that is currently active in the security service.

A realm, represents a set of known users along with optional group membership information. The main implementation also encapsulates a mechanism for performing authentication against the data set.

The main features of the Java EE/Servlet-based access control model are described below:

• Java EE/Servlet-based authentication uses the following configuration files:

  • The web application deployment descriptor files web.xml and sun-web.xml

  • install_dir/config/server.xml

  Authentication is performed by Java security realms that are configured through <auth-realm> entries in the server.xml file.

• Authorization is performed by access control rules in the deployment descriptor file, web.xml, in case any such rules have been set.