Re: [thredds] [Opendap-tech] OPeNDAP authentication

OPeNDAP/G (Gridded OPeNDAP) currently does not support X509 certificates or authentication. The BES does currently support X509 authentication during connection using SSL. And we are currently developing modifications in the BES to allow for secure connections and secure requests to be sent to the BES, allowing clients to pass along security certificates and store them in the BES to be used on behalf of the client for authorization purposes. This will be especially useful in a gridded environment or where the BES is working in paralellel with other BES processes to handle requests. A module can be written and dynamically loaded into the BES to handle authorization. There is no generic authorization in the BES.
I personally haven't tried it, but since the front-end of Hyrax is a tomcat servlet that you can utilize any authentication within tomcat, as is mentioned in another email.
To my knowledge, the only client of the BES that supports SSL authentication is the bescmdln (BES Command Line) client, which is mostly a testing client. We are developing a Globus module for the Earth System Grid project that will use the BES authentication.
The CEDAR project at UCAR developed a BES plugin to handle simple user authentication, as well as additional response types and a reporting mechanism for data usage tracking. 

Patrick West
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Tetherless World Constellation
http://tw.rpi.edu

On Aug 27, 2009, at 6:47 PM, Pauline Mak wrote:


Hi all,
Is there any documentation on OPeNDAP/G, or THREDDS with X509 documentation? We're interested in using authentication (and naturally, authorisation) for some of our datasets. I would like to see if I can do a test setup over here, but I can't seem to find any documentation on doing this... Interestingly, does OPeNDAP client libraries already support this? 

Thanks!

-Pauline.

--
Pauline Mak

Assistant Manager, ARCS Data Services
Ph:  +61 3 6226 7518
Mob: +61 411 638 196
Email: pauline.mak@xxxxxxxxxxx
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http://www.arcs.org.au/

TPAC
Email: pauline.mak@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.tpac.org.au/



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