Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

696 Part VIII: Securing SharePoint Products and Technologies
the necessary information that is then presented to the user within the Web Part.
This process is shown in Figure 26-1. The steps are as follows:
1. A user accesses the Web Part that integrates with the enterprise application for
the first time. The Web Part code checks whether the user credentials for the
required application are stored in the single sign-on database. If they are
stored, the process continues from step 6 in this list.
2. If there are no credentials stored for this user for the required application, the
user’s browser is redirected to the logon form for this application.
3. The user supplies credentials for the application.
4. The supplied credentials are mapped to the user’s Windows account and
stored in the single sign-on database.
5. User is redirected to the original Web Part.
6. The Web Part retrieves the credentials from the single sign-on database.
7. The Web Part submits the credentials to the enterprise application and retrieves
the necessary information.
8. The Web Part is displayed to the user.
On subsequent access, when the user requests the Web Part, to get the necessary
data from the enterprise application the credentials are retrieved from the single
sign-on database. The process is transparent to the user. (See Figure 26-1.)
User
1
2
3
5
8
SharePoint
Portal Server
SSO
database
SQL Server
F26XR01
Figure 26-1 Accessing an enterprise application using single sign-on
4
6
Back-end
enterprise
application
When group enterprise definition is used, the account mapping is configured
by the administrator. The administrator specifies the credentials for accessing the
enterprise applications that are valid for all members of a Windows group. If the
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