Authentication on Internet Apps

Question

I have a question about LDAP and authentication to applications. I am a bit new at this, so I hope this makes sense. I work for a company that uses Novell and edirectory for employees to log into their workstations and get access to the network. We are building internet applications (using Oracle APEX and Oracle Forms) and would like to use the LDAP server for authentication so the employees do not have to log into these applications after already logging into their workstations. I have read whitepapers and I think this is pretty straightforward and do-able.
Now here is my delimma. We will have outside users that will log into some of the applications to use the applications. Our SA's do not want to add them to our Novell edirectory because they are not employees and they do not need access to our network. How do we use an authentication scheme so it will check the LDAP server for authentication of the employee, but check another set of database tables to authenticate the "non-employee" user.
I hope that I used the correct terminology for authentication.
Thanks in advance,
Dan

Answer 1

I agree with your SA not willing to add external users to the Corproate eDirectory. You can do one of two things. You can stand up another directory such as Sun One or Microsoft ADAM or Oracle Internet Directory and use Oracle Access Manager to manage the authentication.
Other option, since you have already figured out how to use LDAP for authentication. You can use Oracle Virtual Directory and your Applicatioin specific database table. Here is how it will work:
User Information will be at eDirectory and Database table
oracle Virtual Directory will be configured to virtualize users from both eDirectory and Database table
Ex: DC=Yourcompany, DC=COm will be Root
OU=Employee, DC=YourCompany, DC=Com = where all employee from eDirectory
OU=External, DC=YourCompany,DC=com -- all your external users from database.
For your application, it will just look like any other LDAP directory but internally it goes go eDirectory and database table.
Thanks
Ram