Planning your user registry

A user registry or repository authenticates a user and retrieves information about users and groups to perform security-related functions, including authentication and authorization.

User registries store user account information, such as user ID and password, that can be accessed during authentication. User repositories store user profiles and preference information. A user registry or repository is used to:

Authenticate a user using basic authentication, identity assertion, or client certificates
Retrieve user and group information to perform security-related administrative functions such as mapping users and groups to security roles

By default, IBM^® WebSphere^® Portal Express is installed with a federated repository with a built-in file repository. The federated repository allows you to add various user registries, realm support for Virtual Portals, and/or property extensions to create a single, working unit. The available user registries that you can add to the federated repository are LDAP user registries, database user registries, and custom user registries.

If you have an application that does not support the federated repository, you can switch to a stand-alone LDAP user registry or a stand-alone custom user registry.

Planning for realm support
A realm is a collection of users from one or more LDAP trees from one or more user registry that form a coherent user population within IBM WebSphere Portal Express. A realm is then mapped to a Virtual Portal to allow the realm's user population to log in to the Virtual Portal.
Planning a property extension configuration
This section tells you about planning a property extension configuration.

Parent topic: Planning for WebSphere Portal