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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...AuthNetNuke - The Easy Way To Integrate DNN and ASP.NET ApplicationsAuthNetNuke - The Easy Way To Integrate DNN and ASP.NET Applications
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1/11/2007 11:20 AM
 
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a single API that could be used by any ASP.Net application to manage user accounts, profile and roles? Maybe it could use a provider architecture so you could customize the implementation just by modifying an entry in the web.config. Maybe it could even be part of the ASP.Net framework and then everyone would use it. Wouldn’t that be great? Of course I’m being sarcastic…

Is there commercial demand for your shared authentication solution? Yes, we thought so! I hope your experience turns out better than ours.

The UCanUse Portal Mapper was one of the first products to leverage the Whidbey membership providers in DotNetNuke. DNN 3.0/4.0 used the portal ID for the application name, creating a separate set of user information for each portal. Our product gave administrators the ability to map a portal to any application name they chose. User accounts could be shared by all portals mapped to the same application name. Using this approach, our product could support single-sign-on, portal groups, etc. You could also map DotNetNuke to use the same application name as an external application. Because we worked at the provider level, we were able to implement this without modifying the DotNetNuke core. However it was necessary to modify the DNNMembership handler because the built-in authorization tended to log users out as they navigated between portals.

But then it all changed…
User account management was completely redesigned in DotNetNuke 3.3/4.3. The profile provider has been abandoned. The membership provider is there but take a good look at how it’s used and how the projects are organized. It would be very easy to remove the ASP.Net membership provider altogether and handle account management internally (think DNN 2.1.2). Supposedly the new architecture is better. I’ll let the DNN community be the judge of that. But I will say it was a LOT easier to customize DNN user management in DNN 3.0/4.0 than it is now.

So to answer your question….
Does your solution alter the way user information is stored in DotNetNuke? Will DotNetNuke function seamlessly if you remove your product? If so, I’d say go for it. You can solve an immediate problem. DNN may break your implementation but at least the DNN site will continue to function after an upgrade.

However be extremely cautious if your implementation modifies the way user account information is stored. Make sure to add a disclaimer stating that your product is designed to work with a specific version and you can’t guarantee an upgrade path. Portal Mapper did not alter the way DNN stored user. DotNetNuke couldn’t even detect it’s presence unless it accessed the aspnet_*** tables directly (which you shouldn’t do). However the upgrade script for DNN 3.3/4.3 does access the asp_net tables directly. Also, Portal Mapper supported a pure isolated model. In DNN user information (first name, last name, display name) is stored in the Users table. What do you do if two users exist in different portals with the same name?

I don’t want to discourage you from releasing your product. Just warn you that account management in DNN is volatile and the only thing you can be sure of is that it will change.

Good Luck,
Brian



Qualtiy DotNetNuke modules and custom development; we've been serving the DNN community for over 2 years and have hundreds of satisfied customers. Let us serve you today.
 
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1/11/2007 12:51 PM
 
Brian - I really appreciate you taking the time to reply with the detail you did.  Thank you.

What I do within the code has an extremely small footprint and does not write any changes to the database.  It doesn't provide SSO within DNN portals, only SSO to external  ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 apps (with minor code/config to them).  If someone upgraded to a newer version of DNN over top of my version, nothing would happen except that the SSO to external apps would not work.  It's a purely code-based change.

I think I'll have something ready for release by end of month.
 
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1/11/2007 1:12 PM
 
Then I'd say go for it. As long as your insulated from potential compatibility problems you should be OK.

Qualtiy DotNetNuke modules and custom development; we've been serving the DNN community for over 2 years and have hundreds of satisfied customers. Let us serve you today.
 
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1/11/2007 6:05 PM
 
Steve White wrote

Shawn -

I'd definitely be interested in a 2.0 version that doesn't require any core mods. I have a few external apps that I want to integrate into DNN and let DNN handle security and membership.

thanks,

Steve


I agree that would be a more attractive option.  My current implementation does require core mods.  You could go with a custom role provider in your 2.0 app (as Will mentions above), but if your installation contains multiple portals, some of which are not administratively under your control, I believe there is a possibility that these other portal users will also have access to your application.  I have not tested that, and could be wrong, but it is one of the reasons for choosing to go the route I did.
 
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1/11/2007 6:08 PM
 
sailu_tp1 wrote

Hi Shaun

Will it be possible to share users/roles across multiple portals. If so i am very interested.

Please give us some details.

Thanks

Sailu


No, my product will not do that.  It simply will allow your DNN portal to maintain profiles, authentication and authorization of users for external ASP.NET applications.  There are already several products on snowcovered that do as you ask..
 
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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...AuthNetNuke - The Easy Way To Integrate DNN and ASP.NET ApplicationsAuthNetNuke - The Easy Way To Integrate DNN and ASP.NET Applications


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