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One of the powerful features of the WSO2 Identity Server; is the user management functionality. The Identity Server can be connected with any type of user store and then user store functions can be exposed as a Web Service APIs. The XACML implementation of WSO2 Identity Server uses these user management APIs for various purposes. All these user management functionalities are inherited from WSO2 Carbon platform.

Configurations are information stored in text-based files and database management systems used by the WSO2 Identity Server to serve the client in a specific manner.

  1. Administrator Credentials - Administrator credentials are stored in the user-mgt.xml file in the repository/conf directory in the distribution pack. This information is used to log into the server in administrator mode.
  2. User-store information - The user-store information is stored in the user-mgt.xml file in the repository/conf directory and master-datasources.xml in the repository/conf/datasources in the distribution pack. The information specifies the user-stores used by the server to store the client-specific identity data with the following types of user-stores.
    1. ldap
    2. Directory server user-store (e.g., Microsoft active directory)
    3. Database management system (e.g., MySQL, informix, cassandra)
    4. Text-based user-store
    5. Internal user-store information

This section explores different options available to customize the product according to user-specific needs.

Realm

The following image can help you understand the concept called “Realm”.

User Realm

A realm is generally a collection of users with attributes, which may or may not be assigned to roles or groups. Basically we can say that the realm represents a user store. However the WSO2 user realm consists of following four aspects,

  • Use store management
  • Authorization Management
  • Claim management
  • Profile configuration management

The WSO2 user kernel contains a Java interface called “UserRealm” which is the realm of WSO2 Carbon servers. It is a collection of interfaces of the above mentioned aspects. There is a default implementation of this called “DefaultRealm“.

Realm Service

This provides methods to manipulate realms. It exposes realms as an OSGI service in Carbon servers. Therefore other bundles (or classes) in same OSGI environment, can use and manipulate them. The Carbon user kernel contains a Java interface called “RealmService” to expose it.

Realm Repository

This is the repository for realm and the repository can basically be any source. It would depend on how you are implementing the interfaces associated with the user realm. By default, the repository is a JDBC database or LDAP based user store added with the JDBC database. 

The default authorization manager and default claim managers depend on the JDBC database.

Realm Configuration

This is all done in an XML file which is called “user-mgt.xml”. Typically this can be found in the <PRODUCT_HOME>/repository/conf directory. This defines all configurations that are related to the user realm and that are used to initialize it.

Aspects of the User Realm

We now have an idea about the user realm, so lets go through each aspect of user realm to attain a more indepth understanding.

User Store Manager

This is component that manages underlying user store. The user store can contain users, user attributes and roles (or groups). It can be a JDBC (table or set of tables), LDAP or AD. ”UserStoreManager” is the Java interface which represents the user store manager. There can be different user store manager implementations to connect with different user stores. However, only one user store manager implementation can be configured with a single user realm (single WSO2 Carbon instance). The user store manager can be operated in both read/write mode and read only mode. If it is read-only mode, you can only connect with an existing user store. WSO2 Identity Server comes with the following default user store manager implementations:

  • JDBCUserStoreManager (both read/write)
  • LDAPUserStoreManager (read only)
  • ApacheDSUserStoreManager (both read/write)

Any user store manager implementation can be written by implementing “UserStoreManager” or extending “AbstractUserStoreManager” or extending any default implementation that is mentioned above.

JDBCUserStoreManager

This uses a schema which is specific to WSO2 Carbon. Four tables which are associated with JDBCUserStoreManager, are mentioned below. You can find the full schema of these four tables from the db scripts file which can be found at <PRODUCT_HOME>/dbscripts directory. 

This db script file contains some other table schemas that are used for user management and registry functions

  • UM_USER: Where user names, passwords, etc. are stored
  • UM_ROLE: Where role names are stored
  • UM_USER_ROLE: Where user role mappings are stored
  • UM_USER_ATTRIBUTE: Where user attributes are stored. There can be any attribute id and a value for that attribute id which is associated with a user’s profile.

If your organization contains an existing JDBC user store and you want to plug it with WSO2 Identity Server, we can not assume that existing user store also has a schema which is compatible with WSO2 Identity Server schema. Therefore you need to extend the “JDBCUserStoreManager” and write a new implementation for your user store according to the your schema.

If you like to use any other schema, rather than the default WSO2 Identity Server user store schema, you can do it as well. However, you need to do the same thing as above; writing a new implementation using “JDBCUserStoreManager”.

You can connect to multiple LDAPs or different user stores with WSO2 Identity Server. You need to implement a new user store manager for this.

Authorization Manager

Any resources related with WSO2 Carbon platform can be protected with role based access control (RBAC).

“JDBCAuthorizationManager” is the default implementation which comes with the WSO2 Identity Server. This uses a WSO2 Carbon specific permission model which uses the authorization data that is stored in tables in the JDBC database.

You can write any implementation and plug it with WSO2 Carbon (XACML based authorization manager would be a good option).

Claim Manager

This is responsible for adding/deleting claims and mapping claims from one namespace to another.

“DefaultClaimManager” is the default implementation which is used to store claim data in tables of the JDBC database.

Visit the following pages to learn more information about the user core kernel usage:

 

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