Mapping Security Roles to Application Server Groups

To map security roles to application server principals and groups, use the security-role-mapping element in the runtime deployment descriptor (DD). The runtime deployment descriptor is an XML file that contains information such as the context root of the web application and the mapping of the portable names of an application’s resources to the Application Server’s resources. The Application Server web application runtime DD is located in /WEB-INF/ along with the web application DD. Runtime deployment descriptors are named sun-web.xml, sun-application.xml, or sun-ejb-jar.xml.

The following example demonstrates how to do this mapping:

<sun-web-app>

      <security-role-mapping>
        <role-name>CEO</role-name>
        <principal-name>smcneely</principal-name>
    </security-role-mapping>

    <security-role-mapping>
        <role-name>Admin</role-name>
        <group-name>director</group-name>
    </security-role-mapping>

    ...

</sun-web-app>

A role can be mapped to specific principals, specific groups, or both. The principal or group names must be valid principals or groups in the current default realm. The role-name element must match the role-name in the security-role element of the corresponding application deployment descriptor (web.xml, ejb-jar.xml) or the role name defined in the @DeclareRoles annotation.

Sometimes the role names used in the application are the same as the group names defined on the Application Server. Under these circumstances, you can use the Admin Console to define a default principal to role mapping that apply to the entire Application Server instance. From the Admin Console, select Configuration, then Security, then check the enable box beside Default Principal to Role Mapping. For more information, read the Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 Developer’s Guide or Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 Administration Guide.