OAM 11g - Webgate NAP Tunneling

 

What is NAP Tunneling?

NAP or OAP is the protocol that is used for communication mechanism between OAM Server & Webgate.
Webgate relies on this channel for communication with the server. This channel is webgate initiated i.e. the request is made by webgate via this NAP channel & server sends the response on this NAP itself.

Now what this tunneling is meant for? It is basically a mechanism via which one can access the resource that is actually deployed at the OAM Server.

So what does that mean by accessing a resource?
Ok, take an example. I want to use an app, which is actually deployed at the OAM Server. But as we know that resources are something which are placed in some resource server.
And to use this app i can't directly hit the resource url because it is not accessible directly.

Thus with webgate r2ps2, a new feature is added i.e. NAP Tunneling. With this we can actually configured the urls that need to be tunneled, like tunneled the request only when the requested url has '/oam' in the url. So by this webgate sends this tunnel request to the server, which in turn sends the resource to the webgate & it is the responsibility of the webgate to parse the response & redirect it back to the user's browser.

How to configure/enable NAP Tunneling Feature in OAM?

1) Define a user-defined parameter in the Webgate Artifact i.e.

     TunneledUrls=<url_path> (relative path not absolute)

Like - I want to tunnel all the request that has '/oam' or '/oamfed' or '/sample'

     TunneledUrls=/oam, /oamfed, /sample

2) The Urls path that we want to tunnel, they must use public resource policy both for authentication & authorization.


3) Make sure that the parameter "DirectAuthenticationServiceDescriptor" in oam-config.xml is set to true.

Note: This oam-config.xml file is placed at <Middleware_Home>/user_projects/domains/<domain_name>/config/fmwconfig/oam-config.xml



The above 3 steps are required for enabling tunneling for ECC. But in case you want to enable tunneling in DCC, than you need to perform few more steps;
 
Following post shows DCC NAP TUNNELING.


Enjoy :-)

[OAM]: Start OAM Admin/Managed Server without getting prompt for username & password

The answer to this is boot.properties file, using this we can make the OAM Admin/Managed Server to start without getting prompt for the username & password.

Where to find this file & what does it contains?

When we install OAM in development mode, this file is created for AdminServer & placed under the <Domain_Home>/servers/AdminServer/security/ directory path.

Note: Domain Home in above directory is the place where you have created the user projects in the middleware home.

Under the above mentioned directory the boot.properties file is created & it contains the credentials details i.e.:
username=<encrypted text>
password=<encrypted text>

That's why in development mode you are not prompted for username & password when you start the Admin Server.

How to use this for Managed Server?

One can simply use the boot.properties file present in the AdminServer security directory & copy it to the oam_server security directory.

Note: This is true in case both the servers are in the same domain.

Like - in my case i have oam_server1 entry in
<domain_home>/servers/oam_server1

Inside this directory i couldn't locate the security folder, so i created a folder with the name 'security' & copies the 'boot.properties' file in it.

Now when i started my oam server it didn't asked me for the credentials.

What if i create my own boot.properties file?

One can create a new boot.properties files, that means it will contain plain text username & passowrd not the encrypted one.
When someone starts the oam server, it reads the credentials but it than encrypts the file. Thus the file contents are changed that means no more plain text is their.

I don't see a security folder in my server directory?

So create one a folder with name 'security' & create a file with name 'boot.properties. User credentials need to be entered in the properties file.

References:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E14571_01/web.1111/e13708/overview.htm#START128


Enjoy :-)

Understanding Oracle Identity Federation

Basics of OIF:

What exactly is OIF?

- Basically it enables the different entities to share their services using a global identity maintained by one of the organisation.

So what exactly it means?

Take an example to understand the usage of OIF:
- Let say a company ABC wants to use the service of a Health Care Company, so that ABC company employees can access Health Care Portal.
For this the health care company should have the ABC comapny employee database, so that when the ABC company employees wants to use the Health Care Services they can be authenticate & authorize to do so.
But ABC cann't share the database. So in this scenario how can Health Care Portal be able to become part of ABC comapny?

Answer is Federation.

Thus here ABC Company using the OAM SSO for their employees, decides to enable the Federation feature. And the similiar OAM setup needs to be done at the Health Care side.
So in this case ABC company acts as Identity Provider (IdP) while the Health Care company as Service Provider (SP). 

What are these 2 things? IdP & SP

Oracle Identity Federation supports two integration modes with Oracle Access Manager: authentication mode and SP mode.

• Authentication Mode (IdP)

In the authentication mode, Oracle Identity Federation delegates authentication of the user to Oracle Access Manager.
The user is redirected to an Oracle Identity Federation resource protected by WebGate, that triggers the Oracle Access Manager authentication flow. Once the user is identified, it will access the resource, and WebGate will provide to Oracle Identity Federation an HTTP header containing the user's identity.

• SP Mode

In the SP mode, Oracle Access Manager delegates user authentication to Oracle Identity Federation, which uses the Federation Oracle Single Sign-On protocol with a remote Identity Provider. Once the Federation Oracle Single Sign-On flow is performed, Oracle Identity Federation will create a local session and then propagates the authentication state to Oracle Access Manager, which maintains the session information.

 

Use Case:
1) User access the ABC company portal, & hits the health care portal link. User is redirected to health care portal, where he is asked to enter his credentials.
 User submits his credentials which are actually saved in the ABC company database. Thus health care site sends the credentials submitted by user to the ABC comapny using SAMLv2.0 token form.
 ABC company replies in the SAMLv2.0 as well & health care portal reads the token returned by  

 ABC & based on the reply like user is valid & authorized or not. Health care portal takes the 

 decision. And makes the user to access the health care services based on that.
  
So in this way they get federated seamlessly.

References:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/oid.1111/e10036/basics_14_oif_user.htm

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E21764_01/core.1111/e12035/wiring.htm#IMEDG1184

Enjoy :-)

Enabling DCC for OAM 11g & OIF

Enabling DCC for OAM & OIF:

This post is divided into following sections:

1) Understanding OIF
2) Installing OAM 11g, OHS, Webgate 11g
3) Integrating OIF & OAM 11g
4) DCC for OAM & OIF

Enjoy :-)