Package com.epicentric.user

Implements the Vignette Portal user management layer; users and user groups are accessed and managed through this package.

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Package Summary

Class Summary

SystemUserGroup	User group used internally by Vignette Portal for permissioning purposes.
SystemUserGroupManager	Manager class for accessing SystemUserGroup instances in Vignette Portal.
SystemUserGroupQueryResults	A representation of the results from a system user group query.
User	Representation of a Vignette Portal user.
UserGroup	Object representation of a Vignette Portal user group.
UserGroupManager	Manager class for accessing UserGroup instances in Vignette Portal.
UserGroupQueryResults	A representation of the results from a user group query.
UserManager	Manager class for accessing User instances in Vignette Portal.
UserQueryResults	A representation of the results from a user query.

Package com.epicentric.user Description

Implements the Vignette Portal user management layer; users and user groups are accessed and managed through this package.

A Vignette Portal site has two types of users:

• Standard users are registered users--those who are known to the site. Information about each standard user is persistent. Standard users can be preloaded from an external data store or added through the Vignette Portal administration consoles. In addition, sites have the option of allowing visitors to self-register, thereby becoming standard users. (Note that from the perspective of Vignette Portal administrators, the terms standard user and registered user have slightly different meanings: a standard user belongs to at least one user group, and a registered user belongs to a user group that has permission to log onto a site.)
• Guest user is a special account that enables any visitor to gain access to a configurable set of site features. All users who do not log on to a Vignette Portal site share a single guest user account. Guest access can be disallowed at the Vignette Portal or individual site level.

A Vignette Portal site has two main types of user groups:

• System groups are internally created and managed by Vignette Portal. There are several types of system groups:
  • Registered Users is the parent of all standard users.
  • Everyone is the system group that is the parent of the Registered Users system group and the guest user.
  • Standard is the system group that lists all site administrators for a site. Each site has a standard system group, which is automatically created when a new site is created. (A site administrator is a user who has access to all of the functionality provided by the site administration console for one or more sites.)
  • Admin is the system group that lists all Vignette Portal server administrators. (A Vignette Portal server administrator is a user who has access to all of the functionality provided by the server administration console.)
• Standard groups are those created and managed by Vignette Portal administrators. A standard user can belong to any number of standard groups. Vignette Portal administrators can delegate specific server and site administrative functions to standard groups.

User groups can be hierarchical: A group can be designated as a child of any number of groups, which in turn can be children of other groups. ("Parent" and "child" simply denote a membership relationship.) User group membership is also additive in cases where users belongs to multiple groups. Therefore, a particular user has the combined access rights of all of the groups to which that user belongs plus all of the groups that are direct or indirect parents.

Users and user groups are backed by Entity objects; the actual user data is stored using the com.epicentric.entity package, which has methods for querying the properties of users and user groups.

Vignette Portal Developer's Guide, available from Vignette Global Marketplace (http://global.vignette.com), provides examples of the API calls for accessing and managing users and user groups.

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Discussion

See Also:

com.epicentric.authentication, com.epicentric.entity, com.epicentric.segment