Authentication questions...

[Guido Medina <gm...@mercantil.com.do>]

Hi,

  I have been working with servlets & jsp since one year maybe, and I have
been used to kinds of authentication:

1) Through the web server; eg: Apache Web Server access files: .htaccess,
.htpasswd.
2) A bean installed in any jsp or servlet with a session scope that forward
to the authentication page if the session bean variable login is equal to
null if not, go ahead:

<jsp:useBean scope="session" name="client" class="someClass"/>
<%if client.login==null {%>
<jsp:forwad page="authenticate.jsp"/>
<%}%>

 But as you already know and I consider, both method are not really good but
it fixed my problems for a while, so, I heard about Realm and so on.

May someone introduce me a litle bit more about authentication's methods ?

Thanks in advanced for the answers,

Guido.