<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>hi,</div><div>as far as I know Axis is not a container but a library to create SOAP web services.</div><div><br></div><div>There is nothing a container can do with that security information as it's not transferred in a standard http way.</div><div><br></div><div>The username and password that you type in Excel when you create a new SimbaO2x connection are sent to the server in the request header xml element that I copied below.</div><div><br></div><div>So we either modify the xmla servlet or create an xmla callback with the same features.</div><div><br></div><div>Do you agree on the general principle that the client (excel) credentials should be used to open the olap4j connection?</div><div><br></div><div>And that the session id should be used to retrieve existing connections?</div><div>You certainly can't delegate any of these two features to the container.</div><div><br></div><div>thanks!</div><div>Michele <br><br>Sent from my iPhone</div><div><br>On 20 Apr 2011, at 18:19, "Julian Hyde" <<a href="mailto:jhyde@pentaho.com">jhyde@pentaho.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
<div><span class="003491716-20042011"><font color="#000080" size="2" face="Lucida Sans">I'm not an expert on the HTTP/SOAP stuff. But the general
goal should be to let the container (e.g. tomcat or apache axis) manage as much
of this stuff as possible. Maybe you can see how people have made authentication
work elsewhere in the XMLA servlet.</font></span></div>
<div><span class="003491716-20042011"><font color="#000080" size="2" face="Lucida Sans"></font></span> </div>
<div><span class="003491716-20042011"><font color="#000080" size="2" face="Lucida Sans">Julian</font></span></div><br>
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<font size="2" face="Tahoma"><b>From:</b> Michele Rossi
[mailto:michele.rossi@gmail.com] <br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, April 20, 2011
8:00 AM<br><b>To:</b> Mondrian developer mailing list<br><b>Cc:</b>
<a href="mailto:jhyde@pentaho.com"><a href="mailto:jhyde@pentaho.com">jhyde@pentaho.com</a></a><br><b>Subject:</b> xmla security header
processing<br></font><br></div>
<div></div>Hi,
<div><br></div>
<div>I am writing some code to handle the xmla security header:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>
<div><Header></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<Security xmlns="<a href="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2002/04/secext"><a href="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2002/04/secext">http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2002/04/secext</a></a>"></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<UsernameToken></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<Username>MICHELE</Username></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<Password
Type="PasswordText">ROSSI</Password></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
</UsernameToken></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
</Security></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<BeginSession mustUnderstand="1"
xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-analysis" /></div>
<div><span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span"></span>
<span style="WHITE-SPACE: pre" class="Apple-tab-span">
</span></Header></div></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Such header is sent out by XMLA clients such as SimbaO2X (Excel
plugin).</div>
<div>My idea is to pass user credentials down to the connection manager
and use them to create new connections.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I also think that connections should be associated with sessions.</div>
<div>I am thinking of a Map that associates session IDs with OlapConnection
objects.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I can put all this logic directly in DefaultXmlaServlet or (probably) in
a "XmlaRequestCallback" class.</div>
<div>Which option do we want to go for?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I also have in mind another more specific bit of functionality: hiding
username / password in the session ID returned to the xmla client.</div>
<div>This can be useful especially in the case of a server going down and
forgetting a particular session id.</div>
<div>(Your user leaves Excel open for a couple of days and when he tries to
use the Pivot again he gets an error if the server has been bounced in the
meantime).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The other use case could be http load balancers.</div>
<div>As Excel does not send any cookies most load balancers would fail to
apply the "sticky session" policy and could redirect different xmla requests
to different cluster members.</div>
<div>Only one of those members would know about the specified session ID (in
other words only one of those servers would have an OlapConnection object
stored under the given session id) but the others could re-obtain the
credentials by de-crypting the session id.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I can make the encrypted session ID very secure - even to "clear text"
attacks.</div>
<div>I will discuss the details only if we think it's a feature worth
having.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Michele</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div></blockquote>
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