User Management (SAP Library - Administration Guide)

User Management

Purpose

In an Enterprise Portal, the user has access to many different systems, applications and databases. Typically, each of these uses its own user data repository. Keeping the same user data in several different repositories causes redundancy and is prone to errors. To integrate the user data for user management purposes, many companies now use directory services based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) as central user stores.

The user management component of the Enterprise Portal leverages your existing landscape by using a corporate LDAP directory server as its central user data repository. It accesses any existing data schema by allowing you to map the attributes used in the schema.

In addition to a corporate directory, the portal user management component also uses a dedicated directory, called the portal LDAP directory, to store additional data for the portal. The user management application programming interface (API) provides iViews with access to this data.

Features

The user management component of the Enterprise Portal provides you with the following:

An extensive application programming interface (API) that allows iViews to read data from the corporate LDAP directory and to read and write data to the portal LDAP directory. It also provides Single Sign-On functions. To use the API you have to map the names of the attributes in your corporate directory to the names of the attributes in the API. For more details, see Mapping Attributes.

An easy-to-use tool to set up the portal to access user data in the corporate and portal LDAP directories. For more information, see Configuration of User Management and Security.

A user mapping tool to enable portal users to access systems via Single Sign-On even if they have different user IDs and passwords in those systems. For more information, see User Mapping.

A tool for assigning users and groups to roles. See Assignment of Users and Groups to Roles.

Authentication of portal users against user repository

Infrastructure to access other systems (user mapping)

The User Management component supports LDAP directory servers as a data repository. If you wish to use a different type of data repository, the User Management API allows you write your own adapter for this type of data repository.

Additional Sources of Information

For the most recent changes in user management, see SAP Note 448828 EP 5.0: Central Note for EP-PIN-USM (User Management).