Re: [thredds] Proposal for handling authorization credentials in thredds....

• To: Dennis Heimbigner <dmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: Re: [thredds] Proposal for handling authorization credentials in thredds....
• From: Benno Blumenthal <benno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:23:48 -0500

I am pretty sure the essential scheme is OAuth -- authorizing a third party
to access data on the user's behalf -- though the primary implementation
would be OpenID with OAuth extensions.   Unfortunately OAuth 2.0 is still
being hammered out, so we are stuck with OAuth 1.0, which does not have any
real discovery in it, i.e. you cannot figure out from the denial what to do,
but that will get fixed in 2.0.  At least, they are arguing about it.  But
at least you (we) can get the pieces into place.

Benno

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Dennis Heimbigner <dmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> I am in the process of refactoring the
> remote data access functionality for
> thredds. This currently will affect
> opendap, but others may occur in the future.
>
> My goal for this initial message is to solicit
> comments about the following proposal to make
> sure I am not missing any. Please post comments
> on this newsgroup or send them directly to me
> (dmh@xxxxxxxx).
>
> Additionally, I do not have access to
> servers that use the auth mechanisms
> listed below. I have ESG, but not the others.
> If you are game, and can provide me with an
> account on your server, so I can do testing,
> it would be much appreciated.
>
> =Dennis Heimbigner
>  Unidata
>
> ------------------------------
> Proposal:
>
> The primary issue here is providing various kinds of authorization
> credentials (broadly construed) to servers by clients.
>
> Currently, I have identified the following scenarios that must be
> supported (pardon me if I am a bit loose with terminology).
>
> 1. client-side credentials:
>    - basic password credentials
>    - java keystore for ESG credentials
>    - OPEN-ID credentials (probably restricted
>      to web-browser access only).
>
> 2. server-side credentials support:
>   - currently basic and keystore are already supported
>     in apache httpclient-3.
>   - OPEN-ID support will require additional server-side code.
>
> 3. Proxy support
>    - providing password access to get through proxies.
>
> There is an additional factor.  It is desirable to support both "global"
> and "dynamic" credentialing.
>
> Global - this means that a single set of credentials is set globally and
>         is adequate for all code running within a single program
>         (i.e. linux or windows process).
>
> Dynamic - this means that each connection to a server may have a
>          separate set of credentials. Further, it must be guaranteed
>          that no connection is re-used to avoid inadvertent access to
>          some other set of credentials.
>
> My refactoring involves the following changes:
>
> 1. wrap the HttpClient class within a new class called HTTPSession to
>   give better control over the parameters for the HttpClient objects.
>   Methods are also wrapped using an HTTPMethod class.
>
> 2. Remove all static HttpClient (HTTPSession) class variables.  This so
>   far is affecting NetcdfDataset.java, HttpClientManager.java
>   HTTPRandomAccessFile.java, and NetcdfFile.java.
>
> 3. Modify the api's of the above classes to provide an extra parameter
>   to pass in authorization information.  The authorization information
>   is passed using an instance of the HttpConnectionParams class so that
>   it can hold arbitrary (key,value) pairs.
>
> 4. The authorization information is passed along ultimately into where
>   it is needed, namely the HTTPSession object, the HTTPMethod object
>   and into the SSLProtocolFactory.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Dr. M. Benno Blumenthal          benno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
International Research Institute for climate and society
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Lamont Campus, Palisades NY 10964-8000   (845) 680-4450

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    • From: Dennis Heimbigner