JBoss Portal uses the user module and role module to manage user and roles.

UserModule

The UserModule is a service that makes possible operations on users.

The default implementation stores information in a relational database using a set of tables. Of course it could be possible to modify directly the tables but it is advocated to use the UserModule instead of doing that.

RoleModule

The RoleModule is a service that makes possible operations on roles.

Like the UserModule, the default implementation of the RoleModule stores the information in a relational database.

Login

JBoss Portal uses the servlet container authentication to perform the login process of a single user. The integration of Tomcat and JBoss AS delegates this task to the JBossSX framework that delegates itself to JAAS. Therefore the integration between JBoss Portal occurs at in this layer through the usage of the ModelLoginModule.

The ModelLoginModule delegates its operation to the UserModule and RoleModule in order to perform

1. Authentication

2. Get the security roles as defined per J2EE