Use authentication to establish a user's identity to control access to an application. Authentication may require a user identify a user name and password or could involve the use of digital certificates or a secure key.
Parent topic: Managing Application Security
Learn about authentication.
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
You determine how your application interacts with users. If all users have the same rights and privileges, they are referred to as public users. However, if your application must track each user individually, you must specify an authentication method.
Authentication establishes the identity of each user who accesses your application. Many authentication processes require that a user provide some type of credentials such as a user name and password. These credentials are then evaluated and they either pass or fail. If the credentials pass, the user has access to the application. Otherwise, access is denied.
Once a user has been identified, the Application Express engine keeps track of each user by setting the value of the built-in substitution string APP_USER. As a user navigates from page to page, the Application Express engine sets the value of APP_USER to identify the user. The Application Express engine uses APP_USER as one component of a key for tracking each user's session state.
From a programming perspective, you can access APP_USER using the following syntax:
As a bind variable from either PL/SQL or SQL:
:APP_USER
From PL/SQL packages and triggers:
V('APP_USER')
As an attribute of the context APEX$SESSION:
sys_context('APEX$SESSION', 'APP_USER')
You can use APP_USER to perform your own security checks and conditional processing. For example, suppose you created the following table:
CREATE TABLE my_security_table ( user_id VARCHAR2(30), privilege VARCHAR2(30));
Once created, you could populate this table with user privilege information and then use it to control the display of pages, tabs, navigation bars, buttons, regions, or any other control or component.
See Also:
Parent topic: Understanding Authentication
Oracle Application Express applications that use authentication schemes support deep linking. Deep linking refers to the ability to link to an Oracle Application Express page out of context (for example, from a hyperlink in an email or workflow notification). When you link to a page out of context and the application requires the user be authenticated, the user is taken to the login page. After credentials verification, the Application Express engine automatically displays the page that was referenced in the original link.
Parent topic: Understanding Authentication
As you create your application, you must determine whether to include authentication. You can:
Choose to not require authentication. Oracle Application Express does not check any user credentials. All pages of your application are accessible to all users.
Select a built-in authentication scheme. Create an authentication method based on available preconfigured authentication schemes. Depending on which scheme you choose, you may also have to configure the corresponding components of Oracle 10giAS, Oracle Internet Directory, or other external services.
Create custom authentication scheme. Create a custom authentication method to have complete control over the authentication interface. To implement this approach, you must provide a PL/SQL function the Application Express engine executes before processing each page request. This function's Boolean return value determines whether the Application Express engine processes the page normally or displays a failure page.
Create an authentication scheme on the Shared Components page.
To create an authentication scheme:
Learn about the preconfigured authentication schemes.
When you create an authentication scheme from the gallery you can select a preconfigured authentication scheme which follows a standard behavior for authentication and session management. Note that if you create a new authentication scheme, it automatically becomes the current authentication scheme for the selected application. This section describes all preconfigured authentication schemes that ship with Oracle Application Express.
Tip:
Authentication schemes support plug-ins. To learn more, see "Implementing Plug-ins."
OpenID Connect or OAuth2 standards.Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
Application Express Accounts are user accounts that are created within and managed in the Oracle Application Express user repository. When you use this method, your application is authenticated against these accounts.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
Application Express Accounts is a good solution when:
You want control of the user account repository.
User name and password-based approach to security is sufficient.
You do not need to integrate into a single sign-on framework.
Application Express Accounts is an especially good approach when you must get a group of users up and running on a new application quickly.
See Also:
"Managing Application Express Users" in Oracle Application Express Administration Guide
Parent topic: Application Express Accounts
To set up Application Express Accounts:
Parent topic: Application Express Accounts
Creating a Custom Authentication scheme from scratch to have complete control over your authentication interface.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
Custom Authentication is the best approach for applications when any of the following is true:
Database authentication or other methods are not adequate.
You want to develop your own login form and associated methods.
You want to control security aspects of session management.
You want to record or audit activity at the user or session level.
You want to enforce session activity or expiry limits.
You want to program conditional one-way redirection logic before Oracle Application Express page processing.
You want to integrate your application with non-Oracle Application Express applications using a common session management framework.
Your application consists of multiple applications that operate seamlessly (for example, more than one application ID).
Tip:
If you are planning on using the same authentication scheme for multiple applications, consider writing a custom authentication plug-in. See "Implementing Plug-ins."
Parent topic: Custom Authentication
To create a custom authentication scheme:
See Also:
Parent topic: Custom Authentication
When running custom authentication, Oracle Application Express attempts to prevent two improper situations:
Intentional attempts by a user to access session state belonging to someone else. However, users can still type in an arbitrary application session ID into the URL.
Inadvertent access to a stale session state (probably belonging to the same user from an earlier time). This would commonly result from using bookmarks to application pages.
Oracle Application Express checks that the user identity token set by the custom authentication function matches the user identity recorded when the application session was first created. If the user has not yet been authenticated and the user identity is not yet known, the session state being accessed does not belong to someone else. These checks determine whether the session ID in the request can be used. If not, the Application Express engine redirects back the same page using an appropriate session ID.
Parent topic: Custom Authentication
Database Account Credentials authentication utilizes database schema accounts to authenticate users.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
Database Account Credentials requires that a database user (schema) exist in the local database. This authentication method uses the database account user name and password to authenticate the user. Choose Database Account Credentials if having one database account for each named user of your application is feasible and account maintenance using database tools meets your needs.
Parent topic: Database Accounts
To set up Database Account Credentials:
Parent topic: Database Accounts
Authenticate users externally by storing the username in a HTTP Header variable set by the web server.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
HTTP Header Variable supports the use of header variables to identify a user and to create an Application Express user session. Use HTTP Header Variable authentication scheme if your company employs a centralized web authentication solution like Oracle Access Manager which provides single sign-on across applications and technologies. User credential verification is performed by these systems and they pass the user's name to Oracle Application Express using a HTTP header variable such as "REMOTE_USER" (which is the default).
Parent topic: HTTP Header Variable
To set up HTTP Header Variable:
See Also:
Parent topic: HTTP Header Variable
Authenticate a user and password with an authentication request to a LDAP server.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
You can configure any authentication scheme that uses a login page to use Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to verify the user name and password submitted on the login page.
App Builder includes wizards and edit pages that explain how to configure this option. These wizards assume that an LDAP directory accessible to your application for this purpose already exists and that it can respond to a SIMPLE_BIND_S call for credentials verification. When you create an LDAP Credentials authentication scheme, the wizard requests and saves the LDAP host name, LDAP port, DN string, and determines whether to use SSL, exact DN, and optionally a search filter if not using exact DN. An optional preprocessing function can be specified to adjust formatting of the user name passed to the API.
Parent topic: LDAP Directory Verification
To set up LDAP Directory:
See Also:
"Configuring Wallet Information"in Oracle Application Express Administration Guide
"Using Oracle Wallet Manager" in Oracle Database Advanced Security Guide
Parent topic: LDAP Directory Verification
Adopts the current database user. This approach can be used in combination with a mod_plsql Database Access Descriptor (DAD) configuration that uses basic authentication to set the database session user.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
DAD credentials verification uses the Oracle database native authentication and user mechanisms to authenticate users using a basic authentication scheme. This authentication scheme gets the user name from the DAD either as the value stored in the DAD configuration or, if the account information is not stored in the DAD configuration, as the user name captured using the basic authentication challenge.
To use DAD credentials verification:
Each application user must have a user account in the Oracle database.
You must configure a PL/SQL DAD for basic authentication (without account information).
This results in one user name/password challenge for browser session for your application users. The user identity token is then made available in the APP_USER item.
DAD database authentication is useful when you must implement an authentication method that requires minimal setup for a manageable number of users. Ideally these users would have self-managed accounts in the database and your use of this authentication method would be short lived (for example, during the demonstration or prototyping stages of development).
The main drawback of this approach is burdensome account maintenance, especially if users do not administer their own passwords, or if their database accounts exist only to facilitate authentication to your application.
Parent topic: No Authentication (using DAD)
To set up DAD Credentials Verification:
Parent topic: No Authentication (using DAD)
Enable anyone to access your application using a built-in login page that captures a user name.
Open Door Credentials authentication is useful during application development.
To set up Open Door Credentials:
Parent topic: Open Door Credentials
Delegates authentication to the Oracle AS Single Sign-On (SSO) Server. To use this authentication scheme, your site must have been registered as a partner application with the SSO server.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
Oracle Application Express applications can operate as partner applications with Oracle Application Server's Single Sign-On (SSO) infrastructure. You must register your application (or register the Application Express engine) as the partner application by following the Oracle Application Server instructions for registering partner applications and install the Oracle 9iAS SSO Software Developer Kit (SDK).
If you choose this approach, your application will not use an integrated login page. Instead, when a user accesses your application in a new browser session, the Application Express engine redirects to the Single Sign-On login page. After the user is authenticated by SSO, the SSO components redirect back to your application, passing the user identity and other information to the Application Express engine. The user can then continue to use the application until they log off, terminate their browser session, or until some other session-terminating event occurs.
Parent topic: Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On Server
To set up Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On:
See Also:
Parent topic: Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On Server
Supports authentication with Google, Facebook, and other social network that supports OpenID Connect or OAuth2 standards.
Parent topic: Understanding Preconfigured Authentication Schemes
Social Sign-In authentication is primarily useful for the following use cases:
Your application is internet facing and you expect an unknown number of users from social networks to use your application.
Your company has standardized on one of these providers, Oracle Identity Cloud Service, an internal OpenID Connect or OAuth2 system for authentication.
User credential verification is performed by these systems. Be aware that anyone who is registered at this provider can use your application, unless you use authorization schemes for protection.
Social network authentication providers store a multitude of information about users. You can configure the Social Login authentication scheme to request this information, using the Scope attribute (see Item Help). In the authentication scheme's Post-Authentication procedure, you can access this information using APEX_JSON.GET_% function calls.
You can use multiple authentication schemes in your application, to support more than one Social Login provider and other schemes.
See Also:
"Authorization" for the authentication scheme attribute Switch in Session for details.
Parent topic: Social Sign-In
Note:
As a prerequisite for creating the Social Sign-In Authentication , you have to request OAuth2 credentials from the authentication provider and configure your account to support redirects to your application. Check your authentication provider's documentation for the details. The steps below assume that this has been done and that you saved the OAuth2 credentials in the application's shared components.
To set up Social Sign-In Authentication:
Parent topic: Social Sign-In
Manage available authentication schemes in the Authentication Schemes Repository.
Once created, available authentication schemes display in the Authentication Schemes Repository.
To navigate to the Authentication Schemes Repository:
See Also:
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
View the current authentication scheme associated with an application.
To view the current authentication scheme for an application:
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
Change the authentication scheme associated with an application.
To change the authentication scheme for an application:
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
Create an application login page.
When you create an application in Oracle Application Express, a login page is created. The alias for the page is 'LOGIN'. You can use this page as the "invalid session page" in an authentication scheme. The page is constructed with processes that call the Oracle Application Express login API to perform credentials verification and session registration.
You can also build your own login pages using the pre-built pages as models and tailoring all of the user interface and processing logic to your requirements.
To create a login page for your application:
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication
View authentication scheme reports.
To view authentication scheme reports:
Parent topic: Establishing User Identity Through Authentication