Apache Felix User Admin - Background

For a detailed overview on the UserAdmin service, see the OSGi compendium specification version 4.0 or later.

Roles¶

The UserAdmin service defines two types of roles: users and groups. Other types of roles are not and cannot be defined.

Users¶

According to the UserAdmin specification, a User role refers to "??any entity that may have any number of credentials associated with it that it may use to authenticate itself??." Normally, User roles are used to authenticate an initiator of a certain action. Although the name suggests otherwise, a User role can also denote anything other than a human being. Examples of valid User roles are:

• A human being with a username and password;
• A machine with a hostname and SSL-certificate.

Groups¶

A group is an aggregation of other users and groups, allowing you to create authorization schemes. Roles are either required or basic members of a group. The basic members of a group define the set of members that can be authorized. This set is further reduced by requiring an initiator of an action to imply all required member of a group. A group can be implied only if it has at least one basic member and at least one required member.