Oracle Discoverer integrate with SSO, SYS_CONTEXT function does not work?

Question

Here is the summary of steps I have already completed:
1. Following the Discoverer configuration guide, I modified mod_osso.conf file.
2. So right now, when I typed
http:\\host: 7778\discoverer\plus, it will direct me to the single-sign-on page.
3. Then I login as "orcladmin" (a user in OID), and I will be direct to the standard Connection page.
4. And I already create a private connection using database user "EDW".
5. So when I click the private connection, I can run the workbook and see all the data. So far so good.
6. Now is the problem, since I am going to use VDP to restrict the data that SSO user can see. (for example, "orcladmin" can only see school1 data, but not school2 data) So I need to use some sort of function to return value "orcladmin" in the database so that I can use it to create security context and policy (for example, when "orcladmin" login, the SQL query discoverer generated will have a where clause school_id=1). And according to the configuration guide, if I run the following SQL, I should get back "orcladmin":
Select SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV', 'CLIENT_IDENTIFIER') from dual;
But instead, I got null. What is the problem? BTW, when I ran the above SQL, I login into the database as EDWPRD, who owns all the base tables that underlying all the workbooks.
Thank you in advance for your help!!
Ren

Answer 1

Hi Ren
When you say that you are testing this in SQL presumably you are doing this in SQL Plus. If this is true then the answer you got back is correct because connections to SQL Plus do not use the App Server SSO login and so the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER attribute will always return NULL. Try switching this to OS_USER and you should see the user name from the operating system. Switching this to SESSION_USER will tell you the database user name, while switching it to TERMINAL will tell you the name of the machine that you are logged on, and so on.
For a full list of attribute values to SYS_CONTEXT take a look here:
http://www.psoug.org/reference/sys_context.html
To take advantage of any of this inside Discoverer you would have to register the PL/SQL SYS_CONTEXT function with Discoverer.
Hope this helps
Regards
Michael