Net.Data Reference Guide

Security and Authentication

You can use three types of authentication methods with Net.Data for OS/390. All three are all based on the options that the IBM Internet Connection Server offers as directives in its configuration file:

Client-based authentication:

The user is prompted to enter a user ID and password at the client. The user ID and password are verified before control is passed to Net.Data and to any resources such as databases.

Server-based authentication:

The user ID at the Web server is used and the user is not prompted for a user ID or password. This option is not recommended and should be used with caution.

Surrogate authentication:

A surrogate user ID is allocated to a group of users and is used for authentication and to govern access to resources such as databases.

Do not use the Net.Data DATABASE, LOGIN and PASSWORD options in the Net.Data configuration and macro files for the OS/390 platform. Allocate the user ID (LOGIN) using one of the three methods described above.