I am currently looking into using the IDM API as I am authenticating some HTTP requests and I am running into a couple of questions, the aspect of the API I am currently looking at is: - // Credential management boolean validateCredential(User user, Credential credential); void updateCredential(User user, Credential credential); Correct me if I am wrong as it is the foundation of what I am thinking about but I am seeing the 'validateCredential' as the method to call to validate that the Credential supplied by the user is valid so that we can verify the user is who they claim to be. There is quite a lot below so it may make sense to subsequently break these out into their own discussions. * Userless Validation * As mentioned on the other thread something I would find really useful is something along the lines of: - User validateCredential(Credential credential); This would be for situations where there is a direct mapping from the Credential to the user it relates to, my main example being a X509Certificate. I am looking at this from the perspective of - The IDM is already managing the association of User to Certificate so to call validateCredential I would see it as better that the calling code is not forced to map it to the user first. * Multiple Credentials * The validateCredential method potentially allows many different types of Credential to be used - however the updateCredential method seems to apply a 1:1 mapping of User and Credential. I can see situations where a user would have multiple Credentials, an immediate example being both a Password and a X509Certificate. * Ambiguous Meaning to Credentials * This is just something I am not as clear on how the two relate and think it has the potential to be confusing using the same Credential interface for validation and for association with the user. For Credentials such as the PasswordCredential and X509CertificateCredential these do make sense to both be validated and associated. But then there are Credentials like the DigestCredential which only make sense to be validated but not associated. * Multiple Representations of Same Credential * Another requirement I may have is storing multiple representations of the same Credential against the same user - this is just thinking out loud at the moment so not sure if this would be a responsibility of the IdentityStore. The situation here is that the user has one password but we want to support two different hashes with Digest authentication - if we want to choose to pre-hash the password with the username and realm we would need to do that once per type of hash supported. The benefit of pre-hashing in this way is that if the user has used the same password but for a different realm someone gaining access to the hashed form does not necessarily get access to all of that users accounts. * Access To The Credential * The next issue is where access to the credential is required or at the very least something is needed to be generated from the credential - this is used in client/server scenarios where the server also proves to the client that it knows the users password. Keeping the Credential so that it can not be retrieved from the IDM is good but it does open up the need to be able to generate some response values within the IDM based on additional information supplied. The example I currently have is regarding Digest authentication, I have a need for the following two hashes to be generated: - "username : realm : password" "username : realm : password : nonce : cnonce" The first could be the pre-hashed password I mention above but the second definitely needs generating on demand as we have both the nonce that was generated from the server and the nonce the client has sent to challenge the server. Regards, Darran Lofthouse.