Supporting other auth methods

[Oleg]

Hi, Gents and ladies!

I've spent some time on implementing a hook for other authentication methods in qPad - kerberos, websso, you name it.

What I have now is an alpha version that can use external dlls for authentication (much like studio for kdb+ seeks and supports classes implementing IAuthenticationMethod).

Idea so far is very simple, I have a working qPad P.O.C. and dummy auth dll sample - please drop me a line (zakharovoleg@gmail.com) if you interested in implementing dlls for your organization's infrastructure and trying out this version. Of course, this version is free, just like the base qPad version but authentication dlls most probably should be written in-house, and owned/reviewed/audited by the FI they are going to be used in - it's just common sense.

I tried to provide API as simple and transparent as possible, so there would be absolutely no need to pass usernames/passwords or other auth service details to qPad - authentication dll should take care of all that, giving out just temporary security token to qpad which it will in turn pass to server instead of plain text user:pass pair.

API's negotiable as well, but my goal is to keep it as generic/infrastructure-agnostic as possible of course.

Cheers,
Oleg

[Oleg]

In fact, currently available versions of qPad can support alternative (to clear text) auth methods for quite a while.

Here's how to implement auth method that qPad will be able to use:

You've got to create dll and put it right beside qpad executable, name starts with auth_
Interface is as follows:

LPCWSTR __stdcall GetAuthMethodName();
int __stdcall GetCredentialString(LPCWSTR strConnString, LPWSTR pCredentials, DWORD dwLength);

If qpad can recognize your dll, you'll see another entry in Q Settings default credentials list box, besides clear text - the auth method name your GetAuthMethodName returns.

Now for usage conventions.

Let's say GetAuthMethodName returns "myAD"
Then if you connect to `:localhost:61::myAD?authparam=myparam
GetCredentialString will get called from your dll with "myAD?authparam=myparam" in strConnString, you need to put credential string into pCredentials buffer (if it fits dwLength) or return length needed otherwise.
This string will be used by qpad instead of user:password to connect to the instance.

That's about it.
For convenience, you can of course specify this as a password in Q Settings as a default - if will be used by default whenever you won't specify credentials at all (just not when you hit Test on a connection dialog - this will test exact credentials you provided)

Let me know if you have any problems.