Oracle Security - External Authentication

Question

The requirement is to enable the user to allow access to DB by making the user enter the user name and password only once while accessing the Cognos reports. (Cognos is a BI tool). So the user will enter the username and password at the time he accesses the Cognos application, after this there should not be any logons to access DB.
Cognos stores the user name and password in a LDAP store (in NDS residing on Windows 2000 Advanced Server). So, the question is, can Oracle leverage on the user information stored in the LDAP for Cognos? The external authentication provided by Oracle suggests that if the user info store can be in LDAP provided it is in OID.
Please let me know if this can be achieved and if so, where can I get details about the same.

Answer 1

According to the 8.1.7 documentation:
"Enterprise user security provides single sign-on to Oracle8i using interoperable X.509 v3 certificates over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) v3, and supports the following LDAP-compliant directory services:
Oracle Internet Directory Release 2.0.5 or later
Microsoft Active Directory "
So it sounds like they do not support Novell's LDAP implementation.
Here's a page on managing Enterprise Users http://technet.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle8i/doc_library/817_doc/network.817/a85430/asomeus.htm
Here's a page on managing OS Authentication -http://technet.oracle.com/doc/windows/server.815/a68694/output/ch10.htm
I just finished writing a chapter on OS Authentication in my Oracle security book. I would stay away from OS Authentication unless you have a small number of users. I have not yet researched Enterprise Users, but the concensus seems to be that they provide a much more robust solution.