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| // Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one |
| // or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file |
| // distributed with this work for additional information |
| // regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file |
| // to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the |
| // "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance |
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| // |
| // http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 |
| // |
| // Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, |
| // software distributed under the License is distributed on an |
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| // specific language governing permissions and limitations |
| // under the License. |
| // |
| === Users, Groups and Any Objects |
| |
| Users, Groups and Any Objects are definitely the key entities to manage: as explained <<introduction,above>> |
| in fact, the whole identity management concept is literally about managing identity data. |
| |
| The following identities are supported: |
| |
| * *Users* represent the virtual identities build up of account information fragmented across the associated external |
| resources |
| * *Groups* have the dual purpose of representing entities on external resources supporting this concept (say LDAP or |
| Active Directory) and putting together Users or Any Objects for implementing group-based provisioning, e.g. to |
| dynamically associate Users or Any Objects to external resources |
| * *Any Objects* actually cover very different entities that can be modeled: printers, services, sensors, ... |
| |
| For each of the identities above, Apache Syncope is capable of maintaining: |
| |
| . `name` (`username`, for Users) - string value uniquely identifying a specific user, group or any object instance; |
| . `password` (Users only) - hashed or encrypted value, depending on the selected `password.cipher.algorithm` - see |
| <<configuration-parameters, below>> for details - which can be used for authentication; |
| . set of attributes, with each attribute being a `(key,values)` pair where |
| |
| ** `key` is a string label (e.g. `surname`); |
| ** `values` is a (possibly singleton) collection of data (e.g. `[Doe]` but also |
| `[\john.doe@syncope.apache.org, \jdoe@gmail.com]`) |
| ; the type of values that can be assigned to each attribute is defined via the <<schema,schema>> matching the `key` |
| value (e.g. _plain_ and _derived_); |
| . associations with <<external-resources,external resources>>, for <<provisioning,provisioning>>. |
| |
| [IMPORTANT] |
| .Which schemas can be populated for a given user / group / any object? |
| ==== |
| Each user / group / any object will be able to hold values for all schemas: |
| |
| . defined in the <<AnyTypeClass,Any Type classes>> associated to their <<AnyType, Any Type>>; |
| . defined in the <<AnyTypeClass,Any Type classes>> configured as *_auxiliary_* for the specific instance. |
| ==== |
| |
| Moreover, Users and Any Objects can be part of Groups, or associated to other any objects. |
| |
| [[memberships-relationships]] |
| [NOTE] |
| .Memberships and Relationships |
| ==== |
| When an user or an any object is assigned to a group, a *_membership_* is defined; the (static) members of a group |
| benefit from <<type-extensions,type extensions>>. |
| |
| When an user or an any object is associated to another any object, a *_relationship_* is defined, of one of available |
| <<relationshiptype,relationship types>>. |
| ==== |
| |
| [[security-questions]] |
| [NOTE] |
| .Security Questions |
| ==== |
| The <<password-reset,password reset>> process can be strengthened by requesting users to provide their configured |
| answer to a given security question, chosen among the ones defined. |
| ==== |
