The BI User Community Synchronization with RDMBS Sample demonstrates how to bootstrap and synchronize users and groups in a given BI Beans Catalog with users and roles in a given Oracle RDBMS.
This document explains the sample and also does the following:
Provides information about users and the BI Beans Catalog.
Explains the processes of bootstrapping and synchronizing users.
Explains how to run the script.
A discussion of administrative tasks, such as creating and deleting users and groups and changing attributes, is beyond the scope of this document. This document and sample assume the following:
The user has DBA access to the RDBMS to get information about users and roles
The user has access to SQL*Plus.
For additional information on the topics that are discussed in this document, consult the following resources:
The BI Beans Help system, especially the topics on managing security
PL/SQL User’s Guide
In this document, the application user is the person who invokes a BI Beans application. The application user is also referred to as the BIUser in this document and in the BI Beans Help topics. The administrator is the person who executes the scripts to add users to the BI Beans Catalog and is the audience for this document and sample. In this document, the term subject generically refers to a user or to a group.
The BI Beans Catalog is the only BI Beans component that requires user credentials. Although the BI Beans Catalog does not perform any authentication of its own, it does ensure that the user exists in the user tables in the Catalog before allowing access for that user. Therefore, you must add users to the user tables before the users can connect to the Catalog. Applications seeking connections to the Catalog must supply user credentials in the form of BIUser.
You can add users and groups to the Catalog in one of the following two ways. Use either one of these ways, but not both.
By automatically importing users from an external user community store such as an RDBMS, using scripts that ship with this sample.
By manually adding users who are not part of an external community, using scripts that ship with BI Beans.
When the BI Beans Catalog is newly installed, it contains only one user, namely the database user that installed the Catalog. You must add users to the user tables before any users can connect to the Catalog.
Bootstrapping is the process of adding multiple users to the Catalog from an externally managed user community. The scripts that are provided with this sample allow you to bootstrap users from an external RDBMS. You should bootstrap before synchronizing users.
After most of the users have been bootstrapped, you should periodically ensure that the users in the Catalog match those in the external user repository, which in this sample is an RDBMS. Synchronization is the process of updating the user tables in the BI Beans Catalog with the changes made to the user or group information in the RDBMS. Such changes include the creation of new users and groups and the updating of user and group identities.
For example, if a new user has been added to the RDBMS after the bootstrapping has occurred, then the synchronization script detects that addition and imports the new user to the Catalog. The script can also detect and synchronize changes to the membership of a user. The scripts also handle deletions of users or groups from the Catalog when users or groups are deleted in the external community.
The scripts that are provided with this sample perform only a unidirectional synchronization. That is, the scripts are intended only to bootstrap and synchronize users from an RDBMS to the BI Beans Catalog. The scripts are not meant to work in the opposite direction. The RDBMS is considered to be the centrally managed source for user and group identity.
The BI User Community Synchronization with RDBMS Sample contains the following sample script that you can use to bootstrap and synchronize the users in the BI Beans Catalog with the users in the RDBMS:
rdbms_sync.bat and rdbms_sync.csh
: Use these scripts
to run the synchronization sql script below.
rdbms_sync.sql
:
This script will do both the bootstrapping and the synchronization of users.
Before setting up to run the scripts, bear the following points in mind:
The sample scripts are implemented in PL/SQL, so you must have SQL*PLUS installed.
The sample scripts can synchronize only one RDMBS at a time.
The sample scripts do not work with nested groups. Groups cannot belong to groups.
While the sample scripts are running, BI Beans Catalog users can experience downtime because of updates to the Catalog user tables. Run these scripts when no users are connected to the Catalog.
Before running the scripts, you should understand how they handle entries from the RDBMS, as described in the following list:
When a bootstrapping or synchronization script runs and encounters a subject that already exists through manual entry in the BI Beans Catalog, then the script skips over that subject.
If the RDBMS contains thousands of entries, then the scripts can take several minutes to run.
Update the scripts with user information that pertains to your Catalog and RDBMS as follows:
rdbms_sync.bat
and rdbms_sync.csh
files.
For the command: sqlplus bibcat/bibcat@ashtmp @rdbms_sync.sql
Change bibcat to the username of the Catalog owner, bibcat to the password for the Catalog owner, and ashtmp to the connect string to the database that contains the Catalog.
rdbms_sync.sql
SQL script.Complete the following steps to run the scripts:
From a UNIX command prompt, use the following command:
rdbms_sync.csh
from a Windows/DOS command prompt, use the following command:
rdbms_sync.bat
sqlplus>exit
Copyright © 2004 Oracle Corporation.
All Rights Reserved. |