A first look at POST data preservation in OAM 11g R2 PS1

In this post, we have a quick look at POST data preservation, a new feature introduced in the 11g R2 PS1 (or 11.1.2.1) version of Oracle Access Manager. We'll explain the problem that this feature solves and walk through a simple example explaining how to configure and use the feature. This post is part of a larger series on Oracle Access Manager 11g called Oracle Access Manager Academy. An index to the entire series with links to each of the separate posts is available.

Part 1: How To Load Test OAM11g using Apache JMeter

Exciting, it is Go Live day, the system goes online, everything seems ok for a while, and then Kerplunk!  Thousands of things could have happened and everyone scrambles to figure it out.  What went wrong?   My first question is, “Was a proper load test completed?”  Yes, Load Test.  Functionally the software may have worked, but under a heavy load issues can start bubbling up.  If you have been there like I have many times you know what I am talking about.  Situations like this could be avoided? 

This is where this article comes in.  I have learned the hard way that load testing can provide a lot of great feedback to determine issues whether it be the software, the design, the deployment, or the architecture.  The bottom line is if you do not have fancy software like HP Load Runner, the poor mans version, Apache JMeter, can come to the rescue.  JMeter is FREE, well documented (As much as any other software at least), and there are tons of blogs and articles on JMeter since it has been around for quite a while.  JMeter can also do much more beyond HTTP type of load testing.  I would love to cover even more about JMeter, but unfortunately I have to focus this article to a basic load test that works with OAM11g.   Minimally, I hope this article at least gets you started and even excited to learn more about this great tool.

OIM Reset Password Customization Example

Out-of-the-box, the OIM reset password functionality is available to system administrators, and to delegated administrators who have administrative privileges on users’ accounts and have the ‘reset password’ privilege assigned to them. The data of the user who is having his/her password reset plays no role on how this functionality is presented to delegated administrators.

This post shows a way of having password reset functionality behaving differently depending on the end user data. This post is another post of the OIM Academy series, to check the series click here.
Before going further, it is important to mention that there is a need to first understand the OIM UI customizations concepts. Apart from the OIM documentation available here, you can also check this example and this post.

OIM 11g R2 Delegated Administration Model – Sample implementation (Part II)

Introduction

This article is the continuation of Part I which describes the architecture of a Solution that addresses the requirements of a Sample Use case described later.

In Part I, some key concepts were discussed. Below is a list of topics introduced in Part I of this post:

·         Scoped Administrative Roles

·         Access Policies

·         Disconnected Application Instance

·         Entitlements

This list is intended to serve as a reminder to the audience of the concepts comprising the foundation of the proposed solution.

This post will focus on the following use case:

A Real-Estate Company needs to implement a Provisioning solution to control access to the company's applications. Users log in to an application and are granted access to the application’s features based on group memberships in LDAP groups.

The company has hundreds of LDAP groups controlling what users can do within applications; individual assignment of those entitlements would be highly impractical.

In addition, the company is about to complete three acquisitions and needs to be able to quickly incorporate the new assets to the provisioning framework and start controlling access grants for the new employees coming over from the acquisitions. This is very complex to achieve since the acquired companies have their own directories which will not go away overnight.

Part III will provide the step by step instructions on how to address the requirements.

The importance of "orclguid" in Oracle Virtual Directory

This post will discuss the steps to configure the orclguid within Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD).  It is especially important when integrating OVD with Oracle Access Manager (OAM) and Weblogic Server (WLS).  I see many customers omitting this configuration which leads to errors in OAM.  


Background

All Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) repositories contain a global unique identifier (guid) for every entry.  OVD is no different; it also has a guid object called the orclguid.  When configuring OVD with LDAP repositories it is important to map the LDAP's guid object with Oracle's guid object.  This however, is not configured by default.  In order to do this you will need to configure the VirtualAttribute plug-in for your adapter.

For more information please take a look at the OVD plug-in section in the documentation.

Forgetting this step may cause errors with respect to a) Authentication Failures and b) Identity propagation. For example, in Active Directory (AD) the guid object is called objectGuid, if this is not mapped to an orclGuid you will have issues when trying to propagate the users identity.


High-Level Steps

Once you have determined what the guid object is for your back-end LDAP repository, you will need to use the VirtualAttribute plug-in to map the two attributes. In our example above, the mapping will take the form: 

orclguid=%objectguid%

where objectguid is the guid object for AD.

If you have multiple LDAP back-ends, then you will need to configure the VirtualAttribute plug-in for each one.  Below are some screen shots that shows where you need to configure the plug-in.

Select the plug-in tab within the Adapter configuration...

Create a new Virtual Attribute plug-in with the parameters shown...

The OVD Provider in WLS, the 'orclguid' is already set as the GUID Attribute.   If not, make sure that the value of 'orclguid' is listed as below...

That's it!  The 'orclguid' will now be passed to OAM/WLS for each object with OVD.