Here are some step-by-step instructions on how to integrate the OIOSAML.JAVA with you java application so authentication can be preformed via a Shibboleth 2 IdP. This integration is assuming that your java application is being deployed to a Apache Tomcat Server, you are familiar with Shibboleth IdP's and SP's, and that you have access to the necessary IdP information that you will need.

There is a nice webinar being hosted by the guys at SpringSource:

Webinar: Apache Tomcat Tips and Tricks from the Pros

On Tuesday, November 25th, join Apache experts and committers Mark Thomas and Filip Hanik as they outline top tips and tricks to make management and administration of Apache Tomcat easier, faster and more productive. This webinar will cover:

*Setting up your Apache Tomcat infrastructure for large scale deployments
*How to upgrade and easily rollback different Apache Tomcat and JVM versions
*How to migrate your Apache Tomcat configurations during upgrades
*Apache Tomcat connector configurations
*Best practices around virtual host configurations in Apache Tomcat
*Undocumented configurations options

When
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
1:00pm EST/10:00am PST

REGISTER NOW

According to the Eclipse IDE/Grails Integration to setup code completion of the grails.tld taglib you should add the following to the start of all gsp pages.

<%@ taglib prefix=“g” uri=“/web-app/WEB-INF/tld/grails.tld” %>

This code did not work for me, but when I modified the taglib reference to be following everything started to fall in place.

<%@ taglib prefix=“g” uri=“/WEB-INF/tld/grails.tld” %>

Now I am using Grails 1.0.3 and the documentation says this will no longer work for Grails 1.1 and above. I wonder since the documentation was wrong about the uri path for previous versions, if it will work with the correct uri path with Grails 1.1.

Update:
This change in the uri for the taglib only works if your page is located in the web-app location. Since I am new at grails, I found that when you place the gsp pages in your view directory, the /web-app/WEB-INF/tld/grails.tld uri is correct.

In my search for a Java Service Provider I think I finally found one that works relatively well and provides both SAML 1 and SAML 2 support. The OIOSAML JAVA SP seems to provide a great service provider for any organization to use. The oiosaml java sp provides a great too for developers to integrate Shibboleth SSO security into there applications.

Some of my favorite features of the tool are:

1. Easy to integrate into existing application
2. Built in Servlet Filter to secure pages
3. Open Source
4. Web based configuration built into jar
5. Tool uses its own java keystore
6. Keystore can be created using built in config screens

I have currently used this java sp to secure a few different java applications and have been very happy. The tool has exceeded all of my expectations. There are a few tricks to getting the tool setup with a Shibboleth IdP. I will make sure to write a how to on this whenever I get a free moment.

If you are using Oc4j and you run across a thread issue, you might need to turn User Threads on. You will usually know that you need to do this because of a error message that states:

Javax.naming.NamingException: Not in an application scope – start Orion with the -userThreads switch if using user-created threads

To turn on user threads you will need to add the oc4j.userThreads=true parameter to [ORACLE_HOME]/j2ee/home/config/oc4j.properties