Authentication Playground for SaaS Connection

Prakash Hiremath, Dr P Jayarekha

Abstract The Cloud has increased the demand for integrating between services. Companies want to connect from on-premises apps to cloud services and from cloud services to cloud services and these connections need to be secure and governed for performance. In a Cloudstreams environment developing of an Enterprise connector for any service provider involves understanding of the authentication method used in order to connect and make API calls to the Software as a Service (SaaS) provider. To develop multiple connectors, it is good to have a single place to generate authentication data for standard authentication mechanism like OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0 so that authentication data can be generated easily without much overhead. Calculating authentication data for customized authentication, involves extra steps which will be time consuming for end user and also for connector developer to follow the steps. For REST based connector, the basic authentication mechanisms that often used are OAuth 1.0, OAuth2.0 , Customized OAuth with provider specific User Id or credentials. For SOAP based connector, the authentication schema is usually basic credentials. The credentials will be passed in the header for each operation or a Session Id( generated from the login operation) will be passed in the header information for the operation. Here a new approach has been proposed to have single authentication playground to generate authentication data in order to connect and make an API call through connector. In Cloudstreams, this playground helps to build the connector faster without the overhead of Authentication data. The same can be referred to customer since it eases the authentication data generation to connect and use the APIs. Keywords: OAuth, Cloudstreams, Connector, SOAP, REST.

Title:	Authentication Playground for SaaS Connection
Author Name:	Prakash Hiremath, Dr P Jayarekha
Abstract:	Abstract The Cloud has increased the demand for integrating between services. Companies want to connect from on-premises apps to cloud services and from cloud services to cloud services and these connections need to be secure and governed for performance. In a Cloudstreams environment developing of an Enterprise connector for any service provider involves understanding of the authentication method used in order to connect and make API calls to the Software as a Service (SaaS) provider. To develop multiple connectors, it is good to have a single place to generate authentication data for standard authentication mechanism like OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0 so that authentication data can be generated easily without much overhead. Calculating authentication data for customized authentication, involves extra steps which will be time consuming for end user and also for connector developer to follow the steps. For REST based connector, the basic authentication mechanisms that often used are OAuth 1.0, OAuth2.0 , Customized OAuth with provider specific User Id or credentials. For SOAP based connector, the authentication schema is usually basic credentials. The credentials will be passed in the header for each operation or a Session Id( generated from the login operation) will be passed in the header information for the operation. Here a new approach has been proposed to have single authentication playground to generate authentication data in order to connect and make an API call through connector. In Cloudstreams, this playground helps to build the connector faster without the overhead of Authentication data. The same can be referred to customer since it eases the authentication data generation to connect and use the APIs. Keywords: OAuth, Cloudstreams, Connector, SOAP, REST.
Cite this article:	Prakash Hiremath, Dr P Jayarekha , " Authentication Playground for SaaS Connection " , International Journal of Emerging Trends & Technology in Computer Science (IJETTCS), Volume 4, Issue 5(1), September - October 2015 , pp. 005-008 , ISSN 2278-6856.
Full Text [PDF] Home