Publishing to Secure Servers

Under certain circumstances, when publishing to a channel, the user who is publishing the content (the publisher) will need credentials in order to connect to a server. The following example scenarios all require the publisher to have server credentials:

• publishing to a subscriber with a delivery transport that is defined as a secured WebDAV server
• publishing to a channel's persistent store that is defined as a secured WebDAV server
• publishing to a channel's persistent store that is defined as an archive path that is a secured HTTP server
• publishing to a channel's persistent store that is defined as an archive path that is a secured FTP server

In all of the above scenarios, the publisher needs access to the credentials in order to connect to that server. Because various users can also be publishers, the login information should not be defined in the individual publisher definitions. Instead, the logins should be defined in a group that can be accessed by all publishers. There are two major steps to creating this group:

1. Define the subscribers and persistent stores.
2. Add credentials to the group.

Define the Subscribers and Persistent Stores

To define the subscribers and persistent stores, do the following:

1. Identify the package subscribers whose delivery transport will be defined as WebDAV and the event subscribers whose delivery transport will be defined as HTTP. From each of these users for which the HTTP server is secured, obtain a login that will be available for the publisher to access the HTTP server. Using the Publishing Framework plug-in to SAS Management Console, define these package and event subscribers.
2. Using the Publishing Framework plug-in to SAS Management Console, define the channel(s) whose persistent store will be defined as a secured WebDAV server, and the channels whose persistent store will be an archive path that is defined on a secured HTTP or FTP server. The appropriate server logins should be available for the publisher to access these servers.

If you use the Xythos WFS WebDAV server, see Implementing Authentication and Authorization for the Xythos WFS WebDAV Server in the SAS Integration Technologies: Server Administrator's Guide for more information about security.

Add the HTTP Credentials, FTP Credentials, and Publishers to a Group

To add the appropriate credentials and publishers to the group, do the following:

1. Using the User Manager plug-in to SAS Management Console, define a group that will contain all logins that are needed to access WebDAV, HTTP, and FTP servers.
2. Add to this group the logins that are needed to access the secured WebDAV servers that are defined as persistent stores, and the secured HTTP and FTP servers that are defined as persistent store archive paths. These logins are needed when the persistent store for a channel is defined as a secured WebDAV, HTTP, or FTP server.
3. Add to this group the logins for all package subscribers whose delivery transport is defined as a secured WebDAV server, and all event subscribers whose delivery transport is defined as a secured HTTP server. Obtain the authentication domain, user name, and password for each of these subscribers.
4. Add any users who will be publishing content.

Note: Logins can be added either as group logins or user logins.

Tip: Each login within this group should have a unique authentication domain so that each domain has a specific login to use. If more than one login has the same domain, then the Publishing Framework tries each login until it finds one that works. Because you cannot specify the order in which the Publishing Framework tries logins for a given authentication domain, there is no guarantee that the first successful login will be the desired login.

See Also

For more information, see the following topics in the SAS Integration Technologies: Server Administrator's Guide:

• Administering HTTP Servers and WebDAV
• Implementing Authentication and Authorization for the Xythos WFS WebDAV Server
• Defining SAS Users, Groups, and Login Definitions