How to access J2C alias using CF

Question

Hi,
We have a ColdFusion (9.01) application deployed under WebSphere 7.  There are some application credentials stored in a J2C alias that was configured using the WAS console.  I would like to know if there is any way I can retrieve those credentials programmatically using ColdFusion.
I found an example of how to retrieve them using Java which is currently not an option but I was wondering if the underlying objects can be accessed from CF.
Here is the Java example:
public static javax.resource.spi.security.PasswordCredential getJ2CData(String j2cAlias) throws Exception {
         String methodName = "getJ2CData";
         javax.resource.spi.security.PasswordCredential result = null;
         try {
             // ----------WAS 6 change -------------
             HashMap map = new HashMap();
             map.put(com.ibm.wsspi.security.auth.callback.Constants.MAPPING_ALIAS,j2cAlias);
             CallbackHandler cbh = (WSMappingCallbackHandlerFactory.getInstance()).getCallbackHandler(map, null);
             LoginContext lc = new LoginContext("DefaultPrincipalMapping", cbh);
             lc.login();
             javax.security.auth.Subject subject = lc.getSubject();
             java.util.Set creds = subject.getPrivateCredentials();
             result = (javax.resource.spi.security.PasswordCredential) creds.toArray()[0];
        } catch(Exception e) {
             e.printStackTrace();
             log.severe("APPLICATION ERROR: cannot load credentials for j2calias = " + j2cAlias);
             throw new Exception("Unable to get credentials");
        return result;
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken

Answer 1

If the database is on a public server, you probably can't access it directly (security wise). You can make your applet talk to a server-side application, which makes the database calls on behalf of the applet. But even in an intranet environment this setup is often preferable, because you don't need to distribute a JDBC driver to all your clients.