Re: Re: Singe Sign On

Ammar Ibrahim wrote:

Another question is what about user profiles? for example let's assume we want to create a dating service. ( dating.example.com) Profiles for such sites are huge, ( height, eyes, ...etc ) so I suppose I need to store the profiles on the dating service database. so, SSO will only store usernames/passwords But the problem is that what if two services are storing the NAME. then I don;t want to have redundant copies of that... oh, things are getting complex :D

well now you are no longer keeping it simple. anyways SSO is not a clearly defined term. more importantly is what you really try to achieve here .. are you trying to decentralize data? are you just trying to integrate independant applications? do you trust all participants in the network of sites? for example one very good solution to SSO is to redirect your users to the authentication site and then have the authentication site redirect the users back to you. this has several advantages. for example even if the authentication site goes down, your site is still able to serve pages that require no authentication. the disavantage is of course that if your authentication site fails to redirect people back to you, then you essentially lost the user. now if you dont want this danger if loosing your users like that you could call the external site yourself. but this means that any slow down in the authentication site slows down your site just as much. as processes wait for an answer from the authentication site your server will start hogging ressources just for that. even worse a denial of service attack will now essentially bog down both your site and the authentication site. so i would say its probably not possible to find a one size fits all SSO approach. so spec out your needs carefully. anyways once you got that covered user profiles will probably be a breeze to solve too. regards, Lukas