Authentication plugins

Three authentication types are supported by Crystal Enterprise: secEnterprise, secLDAP, and secWindowsNT. Each type has a corresponding plugin that acts as an authentication provider, verifying user credentials against the appropriate user database.

The authentication plugins are implemented by the following DLLs:

• Crystal Enterprise secEnterprise PlugIn Library
• Crystal Enterprise secLDAPConfig PlugIn Library
• Crystal Enterprise secWindowsNT PlugIn Library

The secEnterprise plugin allows you to specify password settings and other security options for users who log on to the Enterprise system with a native Enterprise account. The secLDAP and secWindowsNT plugins allow you to map a group from an external system to Crystal Enterprise, enabling users who belong to that group to log on to the Enterprise system with a third-party alias.

Note:    When you map a third-party group to the system, you can do one of two things: you can use one of the third-party authentication plugins to create a new group (for which a group name and alias are automatically generated), or you can use the UserGroupAliases collection's Add Method to add a third-party user group alias to an existing Enterprise group, and then update the appropriate authentication plugin so that the members of the third-party group are added to the system. You cannot use a third-party authentication plugin to create a new group, and then re-assign the user group alias to an existing group.

The authentication plugins dynamically maintain third-party user and group listings, which means that when changes are made to the third-party group membership, the listing in Crystal Enterprise is does not need to be updated. For instance, if you map a WindowsNT group to Crystal Enterprise, and then you add a new NT user to the NT group, the third-party plugin dynamically creates an alias for that new user when he or she first logs on to Crystal Enterprise with valid NT credentials.

For information on querying for plugins in the APS InfoStore, see Retrieving an authentication plugin.