Understanding the Database Tier

Identity Manager stores all of its provisioning and state information in the Identity Manager repository. The repository is comprised of tables that store all the configuration data about Identity Manager. It is a single point for Identity Manager to look up data and lock objects. The repository also contains an audit log, which is a history of actions taken in Identity Manager. Identity Manager data is stored as XML. The repository can reside in local files or a relational database, although in production, a relational database is required.

See Repository Database Servers in Sun Identity Manager 8.1 Release Notes for a list of supported database servers.

Note that, beyond a minimal amount of identity information about individual users, user data is not kept in Identity Manager. Instead, only those attributes that are needed to identify and differentiate users within Identity Manager (for example, name and email address) are saved in the repository.

Identity Manager can connect to the repository over a direct JDBC connection, or it can use data source functionality made available by your application server.

The Identity Manager Service Provider feature requires an additional LDAP repository for storing user information. See Understanding Identity Manager Service Provider System Architecture for details.