CORBA and principal based authentication

>>>>> "Jochen" == Jochen Schmidt <jsc@dataheaven.de> writes:

    Jochen> GNOME uses principal based authentication for it's CORBA
    Jochen> based components.  Does the LispWorks ORB support this?
    Jochen> And if so is there some documentation on how to use it?

Hi,

The Principal (aka user) has been deprecated in the official CORBA
standard since 2.2. However, it forms part of the GIOP 1.0 and 1.1
message headers that are marshaled back and forth. It is possible that
the LispWorks ORB just maintains this information for backwards
compatibility and does not do anything special with it, or it could
just force them to be "".

Try "(APROPOS 'PRINCIPAL)" to see what you can do with them.

You may need to use the DII and DSI directly set and get the
principals on the client and server side of requests respectively. Or
you could try hooking into the REQUEST creation and reception
processes so that existing stubs and skeletons work.

I'm assuming that the main issue is how to get the principal passed
from client app code to server app code so that the server can
authenticate the requester somehow.

If you are a supported customer then perhaps any deficiencies could be
addressed. Eg the LispWorks ORB could just use the binding of
*PRINCIPAL* when creating REQUESTs and then bind *PRINCIPAL* when
receiving requests.

__Jason