Data source realm, using primary keys (not varchar)?

[to...@hullegard.com]

Hi

I'm trying to learn authentication and authorization within a web application,
and I think I know the basic stuff an maybe a bit more.
I just read the Tomcat howto guide on realm, and especially data source realm.

But I think their data base example is a bit strange. They have a table
user_roles that consists of a user_name and a role_name. The odd thing is,
these fields are not foreign keys, but varchars! This is really not good
database design. What if I for some reason want to change a username? I should
only have to change the username field in the users table.
The same thing goes with the rolename, although a changed rolename would a
demand a change in the authorization code within the web application, but as
far as the database is concerned I should only have to make the change in a
single table.

I would like something like this:

create table users (
  user_id           int not null primary key,
  user_name         varchar(15) not null,
  user_pass         varchar(15) not null,
);

create table roles (
  role_id           int not null primary key,
  role_name         varchar(15) not null,
);

create table user_roles (
  user_roles_id     int not null primary key,
  user_id           int not null,
  role_id           int not null,
);

Is this possible? I still want to use the built in authentication and
authorization.
If it is possible, how do I configure it in tomcat?

http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/realm-howto.html#DataSourceRealm

Regards
/Jimi

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Re: Data source realm, using primary keys (not varchar)?

[Mark Thomas <ma...@apache.org>]

Structure your data any way you like and use views to present it in 
the form Tomcat expects.

Mark

tomcat@hullegard.com wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm trying to learn authentication and authorization within a web application,
> and I think I know the basic stuff an maybe a bit more.
> I just read the Tomcat howto guide on realm, and especially data source realm.
> 
> But I think their data base example is a bit strange. They have a table
> user_roles that consists of a user_name and a role_name. The odd thing is,
> these fields are not foreign keys, but varchars! This is really not good
> database design. What if I for some reason want to change a username? I should
> only have to change the username field in the users table.
> The same thing goes with the rolename, although a changed rolename would a
> demand a change in the authorization code within the web application, but as
> far as the database is concerned I should only have to make the change in a
> single table.
> 
> I would like something like this:
> 
> create table users (
>   user_id           int not null primary key,
>   user_name         varchar(15) not null,
>   user_pass         varchar(15) not null,
> );
> 
> create table roles (
>   role_id           int not null primary key,
>   role_name         varchar(15) not null,
> );
> 
> create table user_roles (
>   user_roles_id     int not null primary key,
>   user_id           int not null,
>   role_id           int not null,
> );
> 
> Is this possible? I still want to use the built in authentication and
> authorization.
> If it is possible, how do I configure it in tomcat?
> 
> http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/realm-howto.html#DataSourceRealm
> 
> Regards
> /Jimi
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@tomcat.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@tomcat.apache.org
> 
> 



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