Roles; Realms - Sun Microsystems GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 Administration Manual

Understanding Users, Groups, Roles, and Realms

Roles

A role defines which applications and what parts of each application users can access and what
they can do. In other words, roles determine users' authorization levels.
For example, in a personnel application all employees might have access to phone numbers and
email addresses, but only managers would have access to salary information. The application
might define at least two roles: employee and manager; only users in the manager role are
allowed to view salary information.
A role is different from a user group in that a role defines a function in an application, while a
group is a set of users who are related in some way. For example, in the personnel application
there might be groups such as full-time, part-time, and on-leave, but users in all these
groups would still be in the employee role.
Roles are defined in application deployment descriptors. In contrast, groups are defined for an
entire server and realm. The application developer or deployer maps roles to one or more
groups for each application in its deployment descriptor.

Realms

A realm, also called a security policy domain or security domain, is a scope over which the server
defines and enforces a common security policy. In practical terms, a realm is a repository where
the server stores user and group information.
The Enterprise Server comes preconfigured with three realms: file (the initial default realm),
certificate, and admin-realm. It is possible to also set up ldap, JDBC, solaris, or custom
realms. Applications can specify the realm to use in their deployment descriptor. If they do not
specify a realm, the Enterprise Server uses its default realm.
In the file realm, the server stores user credentials locally in a file named keyfile. You can use
the Admin Console to manage users in the file realm.
In the certificate realm, the server stores user credentials in a certificate database. When
using the certificate realm, the server uses certificates with the HTTPS protocol to
authenticate Web clients. For more information about certificates, see
Certificates and SSL" on page
The admin-realm is also a FileRealm and stores administrator user credentials locally in a file
named admin-keyfile. Use the Admin Console to manage users in this realm in the same way
you manage users in the file realm.
In the ldap realm the server gets user credentials from a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
(LDAP) server such as the Directory Server. LDAP is a protocol for enabling anyone to locate
organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether
on the public Internet or on a corporate intranet. Consult your LDAP server documentation for
information on managing users and groups in the ldap realm.
106 Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 Administration Guide • December 2008
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