Core Components and Services that Power Access Manager (Sun Java System Access Manager 7 2005Q4 Technical Overview)

Sun Java System Access Manager 7 2005Q4 Technical Overview

Core Components and Services that Power Access Manager

The core components provide the logic that performs the main Access Manager functions. The core components work with services that run within Access Manager. These internal services process data solely for use by Access Manager. The following table lists the core Access Manager components and internal services along with brief descriptions of what they do.

Table 1–2 Access Manager Core Components and Internal Services


Core Component or Service	What it Does
Authentication component	Validates user’s credentials and verifies that the user is who he claims to be.
Authorization (Policy) component	Evaluates policies to determine whether the user has permission to access the requested resource.
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) component	Provides a protocol-based alternative to using cookies for performing a single sign-on session.
Identity Federation component	Enables user to access resources provided by multiple business partners in a single sign-on session.
User Session Management component	Maintains information about user session, and enforces timeout limits. Provides continued proof of identity to enable single sign-on sessions.
Logging service	Tracks a user’s interactions with web applications. Creates log messages to form an audit trail of important events within the system.
Naming service	Enables a client to locate other Access Manager services such as User Session Management Service, Logging Service, Policy Service, and so forth. Defines URLs used to access these internal services.
Platform service	Manages configurable attributes used in an Access Manager deployment.
Client Detection service	Detects the client type of the browser being used to access the Access Manager application. Client types include HTML, WML, and other protocols.