[rt-devel] Re: [rt-users] External Authentication and Users

[Charlie Brady]

[Follow changed to rt-devel]

On Wed, 3 May 2000, Tobias Brox wrote:

> We have to figure out a general interface for fetching user information
> (as I see it, we will only need three things in RT; login/nick, real name
> and email(s)) and authenticating a user towards an external system.  From
> that point somebody (you, for instance) might make an effort linking this
> towards Lotus Domino.

Something to keep in mind is that it will be difficult to have a
one-size-fits-all solution. The user community of RT sites is quite
varied. One thing that we need to think hard about is the primary index
into the "people" relation. At the moment it is "login". This works really
well for an Intranet site, but "email address" is more appropriate for,
say, a software support site. To my mind, "email address" is more general,
although you still have a problem with aliasing for people with more than
one email address. We could, of course, ignore that.

For an intranet site, using loginname and system password is ideal, but
won't do for other sites. Where there is a mix of local users and external
folk, using system passwords for internal folk, and some other
authentication data base for "others" would be ideal, I would think.

Charlie Brady
Aurema Pty Ltd
 PO Box 305, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012, Australia
Email:charlieb at aurema.com, Tel: +61 2 9698 2322, Fax: +61 2 9699 9174
  "I think it would be a good idea." Gandhi, on Western Civilisation.