AddressBook

Today I just chanced to see a post where somebody could not get the famous AddressBook module working.This module was part of the Oscript documentation and is usually introducing the user to the various concepts livelink programming entails.Like a “Hello World” for Oscript :).I thought of helping the person and the person had deleted the post.which was originally here  He later removed it because many people do not want to appear wrong.However there is no harm in asking or being wrong.

 

Anyways I had done this for another friend so releasing into public domain here….

I did not fix many problems in the module so it is a challenge to the person doing it that is how I learned:)

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Oscript what is it what and would I use it?

Oscript is  a 4GL that is the basis of the application that the OpenText company adopted when they chose to market Livelink the Document Management System.It is safe to say that anything  the Livelink product lacks and  is a valid requirement can be coded in this language.The power of the the Oscript language takes root in the philosophy that was prevalent in the 60’s . Oscript is a superior offering to traditional OOP languages such as Java or C++ that is what Pundits say.

To a trained Oscripter one is able to understand how livelink code is received as well as change it.Now change to any COTS product comes at a cost.That is where the strategy as well as overall grasp in the product comes into mind.If the organization has decided for itself that it will spend the big bucks on livelink, one approach is to identify the ways to use it more.Where the organization is going to make mistakes is when it sees the cost of the “customization”.Many decision makers wrongly decide to go after fly by night programmers/vendors to be totally left in the fray.OT has a professional vested interest to sell customers more code and services so I have been in decisions where sales and marketing  will say do not customize livelink, but that is only half truth in them.If you buy these OT customizations, they are almost certain to be written in Oscript .In many cases it would have been written by senior Oscripters with thought on maintenance aspects  and upgrade ability as well.The same kind of service can be bought by other Oscript houses,in many cases these are extremely talented ex OT ‘ers. Many of the Professional Services modules sometimes outgrows the intents and becomes a marketable module as well.I have no knowledge and am just speculating on that.Once you have identified and  decided to use livelink the best avenue is to hire or ask services of reputed vendors.Modules that contained Oscript code that I used to code in 1999 (first time was on a livelink 8 system) livelink 9.1 version I can almost compile in the modern 10.5 version.My entire career was  and is fruitful because I tried to interact/collaborate and share with the OT team in the KB as well as smaller websites like Greg Griffiths.I was also able to mentor myself amongst very die hard oscripters that I knew from work and just by tracing code to find bugs that needed closure before OT could provide fixes.The knowledge of OT code also allows me to become a better application architect,administrator and integrator.

If the organization is strong in Java and .Net skills then note that the user interface at this time cannot be changed using those languages,however you may use exposed API’s to make functioning applications that use Livelink as the data store

Typical things organizations can and should do.

1. Create implementations of Nodes just like Folder or Document if there is a need for it to be there.Just because OT shows you a “Addressbook” or “Contacts” module not every livelink installation in the world needs new subtypes.It is there if you want to use it ,if there is a complex business requirement that involves a “document” like implementation or a “folder” like implementation.Do search in the KB for such terms as “invasive customizations”, overrides,orphans,subclasses, customizationsRT, weblingo customization.
2. Add Commands in the Nodes these are basically very easy to do in a short order.These two are taught very nicely in class as well.
3. Put a lot of functioning logic into workflows also heard as event scripting.
4. Write code so that livelink can interact with other systemslike using the POJO object.
5. Write agents,distributed agents,expose to columns and facets api something that OT does not give you OOB.
6. Extending SOAP and REST can only be done using Oscript.If you are a shop who has a need to program a integration using java or C# and you see a “GAP” in existing offering it is rather easy for a Oscripter to extend that.

Opentext Programmers have black boxed thing so that many things acts as internal API’s.For e.g we are able to do work without understanding how the “Node” itself is created in livelink. Other examples are the way Oscript can talk to the search system.

Not many people know that livelink uses a api to search.

Out of the world Oscript Offerings.

Christopher Meyer a Long OT veteran his website . It is un believable stuff that I have seen.

Patrick Vitali the maker of AnswerModules

IDE’s one can use

CSIDE a eclipse jar file for versions CS10.5

Livelink Builder CS10 and Versions prior.

Appu’s Long Lost OT Blog

Finally I found  the link to my original blog.In 2007 I joined Alitek as a senior person and was instrumental in training/mentoring most of the people there to fearlessly transgress Oscript .I am not sure if OT marketing /sales because of their vested interests trying to scare people from using the language of the application would create rumors in less technical decision makers of the org.What has happened is a reckless decline of proper design architects in the beautiful language of livelink .It is written in un paralleled style withstanding many patterns of OOP.

In any case what I would advise decision makers is if you have installed and said that Content Server  I even hate that name, Livelink it is for me is there for the ORG then hire/train good developers.It does not matter if you cannot get Oscripters. All you need to do is get a good thinking programmer either versed in java or .net technologies.The person could be set for training and that is it.

Do not employ cheap gimmicks like skins,reporting avenues etc. What a org needs can be handled by Oscript. You DO NOT HAVE to look anything other than oscript to get 150 % out of your livelink application.

Link to Patrick Vitali’s Stuff out of the world

http://www.answermodules.com/

Link to Christopher Meyer’s

http://schwiiz.org/?cat=17

The above links are concrete proof of why Oscript Rocks Really.

Now anyone who knows their computer science one on one would not be questioning why Oscript could not be mastered.

I was very thrilled to get accolades from OT and was told it was done by a peer group which does mean something to me.Now they gave me a blog and I lost the blog because I could not obey one of their time things.I doubt if OT has a award for selfless souls now most awards I see at CW is for huge accounts and managers .Money talks in software decisions one must conclude.

https://communities.opentext.com/communities/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=8298936&objAction=view

Transporting Objects with Livelink

Update:10/22/2014

Me and my colleagues recently used this framework for transporting a custom subtype that we designed.We were helped by a kind OT developer All in all it saved our administration team from running XMLEXPORTS and XMLIMPORTS but the key factor is that needs to work for the transport code to work.

Update ends…

Recently OT announced a “Transport” mechanism. Users working in SAP etc are familiar with such a mechanism as changes to a baseline system are marked as configuration changes and ported to other systems.While I am oversimplifying this in a SAP deployment since so many code modules have to be configured it is impossible for an admin to remember what all has to be changed hence they decided at least 20 yrs back an enterprise program needs a transporting strategy as well.

Now lets look at how livelink gets deployed in an org. Mostly Livelink is deployed to address a document management pain/problem.Some consultants or a admin/developer who gets trained in livelink or somebody who has some documentation starts to install/configure this.assuming the person(s) have some common sense and tickets later it is working.Actually the first time install guide is very nicely written and it is mostly a “next” “next” kind of install.

Having configured it the person/persons start modelling the solution.It may involve setting up folders,categories for collecting metadata,classifications for alternative taxonomies,RM classifications ,Permissions(ACL) etc. OT and a lot of ecosystem partners take the money to sometimes set it up.You can make it complicated or simple.

Ok now that it is past the POC phase the next phase is the perhaps a TEST a more formalized place.Now comes the first shock how do I not necessarily duplicate all the work I did on a lower system.Fortunately while there was no advanced GUI or “Transport Bench” mechanism many of these building blocks can easily be transferred by XML IN/OUT operations.Smarter modules such as Classifications/RM anticipated the need for this so they did make their own transport mechanism well ahead of OT. But almost everything one could accomplish in a poor man’s methods

Now in controlled industries like Pharma etc this manual stuff was sheer heresy so companies like Global Cents made excellent products

So why the Transport now. My theory is the entry of integrations between SAP and Livelink.In fact the web services also was something my thought SAP forced OT’s hands.Many SAP customers are now getting a facelift with livelink doing a lot of backend services,pretty gui’s etc.

Here’s an interesting fictitious exchange between different players in a Integration meeting this is circa 2010,2011

SAP Basis Admin-Here we got the xECM thingy and archive server thingy going with OpenText (Notice OT in that because there is no product called that),I sthere anything else you guys need and can I close the client.

OT Consultant- Oh sure but on the next client you have to give me high access to edit the connections,change a few GUID’s(dataids) etc.

SAP Basis Admin-What the …..That means you have to do all this again

OT Consultant-Not everything just a few tweaks and pointing to the livelink admin..Hey Kishore where are we  on the next OT system. Have the ELIB items(categories and folder looking things) coming along

Livelink Admin-I did that according to documentation.

OT Consultant- How about the dataids did you run the queries I gave you for the re-mapping

Livelink Admin-Yeah everything is there

SAP Basis Admin-All the while thinking that what are these guys talking about re-configure every system.I have about 20 different clients I have to maintain.

OT Consultant-Just to prop up the SAP guy,well you know our guys in Germany are coming up with a Transport mechanism just like yours…

Well finally after a lot of back and forths the project is a success

If it is just a DMS project a lot of us have no problem using the old methods.

I am pretty sure the transport mechanism  is a GUI version of  XML Export/XMl Import.

The reason why I wrote this is recently a friend asked if he would be lucky in a project that would not have Object Importer(OI)/Object Exporter(OE) and its RM variations.

I told him this

OI/OE can be leased from OT for a price .They used to entertain that.

With XMLEXPORT/XMLIMPORT here are a few things you would run into.

1. XMLEXPORT is almost available universally but the reverse is not true universally.

. So if one exported PhysObjects the corresponding import will fail.

2. XMLEXPORT will choke on big documents and the number of nodes because of DOM parser limitations. In OE they bundle the file separately so they can get more throughput even though the code invokes a DOM parser there as well.
3. XMLEXPORT/XMLIMPORT is based on source dataids which is not going to match targets. So if you find the xml exported file and change the category id’s to match the target it will work.
4. XMLEXPORT/XMLIMPORT does not understand the hierarchy. For e.g OI will create nodes as it wants enterprise:folder1:::::::::;;;folder99. In XMLEXPORT import you would have to export and follow the reverse process. So if a child object is nested way into a path OI will handle it XML import you will have to handle it
5. Most people will use XMLEXPORT/XMLIMPORT with lapi code so they can manage a lot of things with code in java or a .net lang

Now that GUIDS are part of 10 and 10.5 I do not know how that affects anything

OI/OE is kind of a framework .So with that I was able to transport compound email,email folder and email in a project with relatively less coding.

Readers-Please tell me if the Tranport Bench from OT is good and easy to use and it resolves conflicts et al and I will delete my post.

LAPI What is It and Should I use it ?

Update:06/12/2017

Realized that OT is supporting old LAPI for their product called Enterprise Scan,Escan used to be completely a client app so if the Livelink server connecting to it is CS16 then OT ask you to install a module.Surreptitiously they call it “Private Bridge Interface” which is all the LAPI Oscript code conveniently bundled into its own Ospace.My guess is this will continue until ESCAN and AGA and other OT bread winners convert to SOAP or REST.

 

Update:12/29/2015 OT has announced that with the launch of CS 16 there will be no server side oscript to receive lapi calls so don’t waste your time reading this or programming in it.Just keeping this for vestigial reasons.

At time of this writing circa Feb 2013. Open Text’s livelink has been in the market for about 18 years and a fairly loyal fan share.The core software was always enhanced /added on by Oscript but for programmers who wished to do utilities such as adding user’s en masse, deleting things en masse et there was LAPI which stood for Livelink Application Programming Interface  .In its inception what I used to see in around 2000,you could program in Java,which I did,there was VB6,there was then C & C++. Vended products such as Livelink Explorer,Authorlink, Autocad Integration etc was around there.In a nut shell these were the steps that one used to take.

1. Install or copy lapi client files in your computer
2. Write a program
3. Compile it and run.

@RunTime the first call which everybody knew as Session creation was akin to Tel netting to the livelink server on Port 2099(default livelink server listening port). As time went by OT added a lot of calls at the LAPI server side so people built a lot of cool things.But there were problems in a way that as modern OOP languages came along they abhorred the idea that livelink was giving them Data structures(LLValue Objects) and making them work thru that.So OT did a small stint they loaded the LAPI libraries on top of a web server and called it Live Services but at that point one could write a web service call.I think it died like the OT’s foray into JavaObjects to replace or do side by side coding as in Oscript. I never understood what one would use JavaObjects for. Note I am not talking about the Oscript to Java Bridge which I have messed with and is very useful.

With the release of 9.7.1 they bundled livelink web services as part of the livelink install the idea bing a company would just use the existing IIS or Tomcat investment and start creating a plumbing conduit into livelink.At CS10 they stopped making a installer for LAPI. I am told that this is because  they do not have the development resources to make libraries in several different languages.

The new web services are strongly typed,you never need to guess what you ask livelink and what you get in return.But while that is easy for a programmer to say and do the majority of programmers are called /hired to do something against livelink has no clue how livelink works.So that is where beautifully written /working hand holding programs are needed.Also a programmer need to understand what he is trying to do which may be as simple as logging into livelink and observing the different things.Jason Smith,Scott Grasley,Kyle Swidrowich these are all great OT programmers who are putting such structure into the new web services paradigm.Whenever I find time and needs some challenging stuff I also do put up some samples but most of my time nowadays are in oscript.

Coming back to LAPI the server side remains and will there be for what I can see. If OT basically puts their foot down and remove the API on the server then your program will not work. But then gain it probably is so far around you have no cause for concern.Not having an installer should be less worrying as any old API edition will work in java or a .NET language.That is what I do.I have a new 64 bit computer.I just copy the dll’s from a 32 bit machine and work on a .Net 2.0 framework.I also lost touch of java somewhere along the way.I guess I will have to brush up because OT is going to get us all programming in Eclipse 🙂

So in conclusion it really is your preference on how to code and how well to save your investment

A LAPI call received in the heart of livelink in oscript.If the AccessEnterprise call one sample was not there your investment would suffer

Going by the same token a web services call received in livelink

As you can see when you program in a client application your call needs to come into livelink.In web services they use the web server to get into livelink code.

At this point you are able to create a lapi code page and call the web services code or a web services code piece and call lapi .Increasingly over time lapi server side will cease to be and no effort will go into its up keep.In older versions of web services they used the LAPI dispatcher to send in the web services command now I don’t think it has a dependency on that.

Chris Morley’s comment a little more computer trained person than me

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=33077212&objAction=viewincontainer

Almost Diatribe from an angry user it is fun

Using the New Storage Rules Wizard on a LES9.7.1

Friday April 24, 2009

Using the New Storage Rules Wizard on a LES9.7.1 Posted by anair@alitek.com on 04/24/2009 08:57 AM

My rating:(1 rating )

Using the New Storage Rules Wizard on a LES9.7.1Recently I was playing with LEA as an alternate storage provider.So the storage provider rules dawned on me and I saw a rule that looks like this Attribute ‘?’ Value is ‘?’.I looked at how one would go about it and the help had nothing.I asked OT support who added me to a ticket and said they would let me know in a patch later.So I just asked around other friends etc who did not know either.But John Simon my good friend from COP asked me this “so did they ever tell you what to put in?  Or have they decided it is bugged and you can’t put anything in to make it work?”That challenged me so I decided to look at what the  code was doing or how one would do this.Without further ado here’s one way that works.My category name is called ‘CoreCatAtts’ My attribute Name is called ToStoreWhere its index is 4.This is to deliberately mislead you. So the Attribute Spec has to be written like this CoreCatAtts[1].ToStoreWhere[1] picture of the rule will make it more worthwhile to the reader For Developers who want to see what all that means The way you are supposed to use it is like that CategoryName[1].AttributeName[1] Don’t be tempted by putting the attribute index it is figuring that from the name. the number 1 after category name specifies the Root Set and the number 1 after attribute name says the row where it is found(they have generic function for row number to handle MVA) {{3762.2},{1,1.4,1}} that is what they are making it do what it means is find the category with defid 3762 and version 2 and the Root Set 1,Row 1,ID and first value of that ID So in oscript if I wanted to find the value of attribute (ID=4) at its 4 th row will be like this {{3762.2},{1,1.4,4}} Try it out and see if that works for you 🙂

The Perils of Using Default Access List

Thursday November 12, 2009

The Perils of Using Default Access List Posted by anair@alitek.com on 11/12/2009 01:22 PM	My rating: (1 rating )
The famous Default Access List that stays with every object in LES.Every now and then people get into all kinds of arguments on how to use a ACL effective for the organization.Recently as of today somebody had a 911 on it and my dear friend John Simon commented.I did and Jim Coursey wrote an exctensive good reply.I wanted to see if I had forgotten what I learned so I wrote this little document to help.Discussion Thread on thishttps://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll/open/16960219Most experienced Livelink administrators understand ACL’s really well and are guided by Open Text or some other experienced persons in setting up a organizational security model .However when writing this we are in a severe economic downturn so most new people have no inkling on how livelink works,how security works and that sort.All they get is the standard OT training and I really don’t think they cover this at all.Most think of Scare Point as the ultimate and it is just a call to the SP admin who logs on clicks a link adds the AD group to the ACL and lo and behold you have a link where you can all communicate/ collaborate while the system is up and running.This is just written for upcoming people so that they understand what they can avoid.I got into this after a user started having qns on some stuff that RecMan poses and my good friend and mentor John Simon COP said something very straightforward.I added to the reply and Jim Coursey also contributed.The trouble is the default access list that Livelink provides out of the box is really geared for a system administrator who understands the livelink owner role.However in a roll out all these get really muddled and then you have a chaotic security model that nobody can ever comprehend. .I wrote an article to complement John’s KISS(Keep It Simple ,S*****)  method  it and hopefully somebody may find it useful.This has already been attempted at OT by another article but mine has some screen shots for the impatient 🙂 https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll?func=ll&objId=3498977&objAction=ArticleView Please do let me know if this article has factual errors.I would not want to mislead anyone.So post why you think this is problematic and why you would like to give Owner a lot of unwanted perms.
Attachments: Perils of using the high privs associated with Owner.docx (254 KB) Download
Hide Recent Comments Re The Perils of Using Default Access List – kenneth.huie@mantech.com  Wed Nov 18 11:04:09 2009 Appu,   This is a great write up!  I appreciate your document and the references you provided. You are so right, this is such a huge topic in that its impact is often not fully understood and the results of incorrect usage of the OWNER … Attachments: Access Control TIP.doc (23 KB) Download

What Pray is Enterprise Library

Stuff from my old BLOG  ARCHIVED – Livelink Rocks– GlobalStar ECM Champ Appu

After I posted this when I look OT has basically introduced more java based code streams especially the module Directory Services is being offered in the realm of RCS.If and when I need to get into OTDS I will post my experiences

In a nut shell both livelink and archive server are not written in java.However in a situation where SAP has to export/import documents or make visible an archived document  which was done using the GOS capabilities of SAP perhaps with the intents of putting a Records Management classification  or maybe get people in SAP a collaborative workspace as in livelink this comes into play.The solution is referred as Extended ECM. For this to work the main plumbing is

SAP to Archive Server using ECMlink  (Archive link is still there I am not sure if they are one and the same)

Livelink to Archive server using Archive Storage provider

RCS(Run Time & Core Services) Lots and lots of helper java code to interact with livelink and archive server

For SAP code to create/declare objects within livelink they will send their requests to a high level wrapper.The wrapper has the code to create livelink type items,such as documents,folders etc.A enterprise library objects is nothing but a livelink object with a livelink category.From SAP and their consultants call it with a different name.Also in a ELS scenario all objects are created within a separate section(volume) like the Enterprise Data Source.Typically for integrating a SAP SID the livelink team uses RCS (the high level wrapper code on Tomcat). When an Application is created in livelink you will see a new data source  by that name.

As a programmer if you have RCS and livelink setup you can actually run code in any language using the examples provided by OT.Note this is not the same as Enterprise Web Services or Content web services that one writes to do something against livelink.

Tha actual ECM deployment is very/highly complicated so please make sure  you understand all the moving parts and players.

Getting ELS accepted will need some help Posted by anair@alitek.com on 07/09/2010 12:04 PM

My rating: Unrated

OT has embraced ELS or Enterprise Library services as  a very cool paradigm for integrating perhaps disparate software systems.The main products in the mix are Livelink and Archive.Even though both products are OT many livelink admins including me would not necssarily know the Archive side(although I am much better at it it).The ELS install documentation is a gargantuan deal and clearly many people trying it out the first time may have a difficult time.I encourage people to ask around,keeping their inhibitions to themselves and usually will get help from the community.I answered a recent KB post on ELS and I published my cheat sheet on it as well.I enclose a link thinking that it may help a potential livelink or ELS admin some day.https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll?func=ll&objId=17841798&objAction=download

HTTPS with Webservices in Livelink

Contrary to stuff that I do this post is basically something I hacked together to make it work.I must have received at least 50 emails for several web services questions.In the absence of OT providing good easy to understand hand holding examples I offer these.If OT ‘s thinking is basically to code a web service a developer needs to take paid training all those things have come to pass.Almost every programming language snippets are available and so there is an expectation that the Vendor provides proper code samples.What I think they should start putting quality samples like what Jason is attempting &  conducting webinars .They could do several official things such as how to code when RCS is present, what is the difference between Enterprise Library Services & Livelink web services,How does the new OTDS come into authenticationg into livelink,What one should do and not do,many things the livelink programming community needs help on.This in my mind will ensure a good talent pool of programmers out there who would do things as OT intends to.

I naturally like to understand what I am doing unfortunately in this installment I have resorted to mostly ‘trial & error’

HTTPS and Livelink Web Services code

As we learned on our SSO attempt and livelink web services this time we start with this

Part 1

1. Make VM IPv4 and disable IPv6 it should work for IPv6 provided you do the stuff in my previous blog.
2. Make sure the IIS7 livelink webserver is functioning fine
3. Make sure anonymous(livelink) authentication is fine  i.e.’ we can login as the powerful ‘Admin’ and the right password.
4. Now with our baseline favorite Kyle Swidrowich’s piece of code start making it work without https
5. We then make IIS HTTPS. Note you cannot make a webserver https commercially without shelling some money.HTTPS needs a certifying authority. For purposes of demonstration I will be using Microsoft’s self-signing certificate. Self-signing certificates are the same secure protocol other than the fact that a commercial company will not stand by it. Products such as archive server uses self-signing certs and OT bundles a signer program so I have used it many times to create closed loops between SAP ,livelink and archive server. For the completely uninitiated a secure transmission means only with the private key can you decipher the communication between the browser and the application so snooping with fiddler/wire shark etc. will give you a lot of garbled messages.
6. So we manage to login as HTTP on that livelink

Again VC#, At this point this looks promising, Now add quickly DocumentManagemnt.svc and ContentService.svc as well Try Kyle’s code and make it work for HTTPS .Perfect everything works we added the document

Part 2

Making IIS HTTPS

I used this site and followed that

see how simple it was for me a non MS/IIS person to figure this out that is what we sadly lack with OT.

BTW word press cannot do embedded images from my word document.I have the word document replete with screen caps in communities.

And this Now for good measure we need to remove http

If you remember a posting I made and Guy Pomerleaux commented if you have http and https running and OT web services code  is accessed you don’t really know you are talking https unless you do this. To keep it simple my livelink is now HTTPs Web GUI or web services. Perhaps if you leave a http listening port this would make your coding easier, but since I am doubtful which protocol will be used I resort to this.My builder program reports HTTPS=on that tells me everything is SSL.

We say yes to the IE warning and proceed to our newly created Livelink website which is now on HTTPS

We have cert errors even after we import the cert to keep IE happy

But I guess it will complain until I paid VeriSign or Thawte some money Perhaps readers can pool some money and buy me a certificate J for all practical purposes I am https

When I try to change my web service references we get this

I say yes

I got this and plenty of yellow looking errors at the livelink web services server when I tried to call the web service. Too many to list and too unknowing to comment on the mumbo jumbo.Essentially at this point I am trying on the server to get this service created.

https://appuw2k8vm/les-services/Authentication.svc

Several errors ensued which I basically got around by removing all traces of places I thought was written for HTTP stuff.

So I remembered form my 9.7.1 that there is some SSL binding stuff we have to do on the web services on the server. So we make a copy of the Web.Config and try it.

Mostly if you remove everything that did not contain SSL and enable the SSL stuff it should work.

Also could not establish trust relationship means you have to install the certificate into the trusted certificate store

A working Web.Config you can find a working app.config you can also find. I am not able to explain the mumbo jumbo as it is mostly trial and error. I hope if any OT knowledgeable people read this they would conduct a webinar on how to do this.

Link 1 The above article replete with screen caps as a word doc

Link 2 The Web.Config that goes on the web services install that works for me 

Link 3 The App.Config from my C# application

Single Sign On and Content Web Services for a livelink server

04/28/2016 Why am I keeping this ?This is obsolete like hell

04/17/2013 APPU—–NOTE THIS IS OUTDATED INFORMATION BUT SETUP WISE IT WILL HELP.

IF YOU ARE ON A UPDATE LEVEL 9 AND UP YOUR EXPERIENCES WILL GREATLY BE IMPRESSED

IF YOU ARE A NOVICE TO INTEGRATED WINDOWS AUTHENTICATION (IF YOU RUN LIVELINK IN WINDOWS IIS AND USE AD FOR THAT)LEARN THAT FROM THE WEB AND UNDERSTAND THAT LIVELINK USES THAT UNDER THE COVERS(OSCRIPT CODE IN DIRECTORY SERVICES MODULE) TO GRANT YOU SINGLE SIGN ON.I AM YET TO TRY MY HANDS ON JAVA BASED OTDS(RCS) BASED DIRECTORY SERVICES

Many users who know me from my contributions ask me to write code that helps with their livelink problems.In many cases it is very new programmers who get assigned to write these.They expect almost without success to find snippets of livelink webservice code thru google etc.I have not frankly understood programmer hurry like this but when you program it does not hurt to put a rational outline on what you are trying to do.In any case OT official dom is very notorious for non hand holding.In fact when I first started writing Dr Lapi I seriously doubt if there was a working sample of lapi code you could find in the web.Now that they have started to tell people not to use LAPI they need to put a lot of working examples as a livelink implementation can become very complicated over years of use and maturity.Also customization can alter ways of its working.

SSO or single sign on is not impersonation in livelink.If you have a ID in livelink with System Admin privileges it is very easy to gain access to livelink and do things as another user.While that sounds very insecure the actions are all audited.It is available in Unix,MS and many other applications hence impersonation is nothing to be considered as lowly.However I take exception when you advertise impersonation as SSO.

SSO is mostly applied to a company Intranet.When people and computers need to be managed they would employ a directory server which usually understands the LDAP protocol.In MS centred organization you would hear as Active Directory,in novell it is NDS,in IBM it may be a Domino or is it Tivoli? server,in SUN /ORACLE places it could be their ldap server.When you sign into a domain held computer unbeknownst to you you have established a trust between your device and the company network.So any other application need to trust you for what you are.that is proper SSO.In web application when you hit a IWA enabled website your browser exchanges a 401 challenge which when successful will populate certain environment variables the famous one REMOTE_USER.In a proper livelink SSO exchange we take that env variable and sign you in.In the livelink database such a user would be called a ‘Externally Authenticated’ user.

Well here’s how I got my CS10 Update 6 VM working with SSO code.I write a long word document detailing my challenges but this is the best short way I can give to the community.My research material is uploaded in the communities web site.In retrospect OT is expecting you to use the OTDS java web server maybe to get applications to integrate.That is when you hear terms such as RCS etc.

LIVELINK SETUP

1. I configured otdsintegration to use webserver authentication.Meaning otdsintegration oscript module allows you a radio button to do web server authentication.I did not configure OTDS(RCS) as I do not have a domain and AD in my VM.
2. I made the IIS VD for livelink IWA
3. I checked whether I could login as my domain user in my case my user called ‘Administrator’ I verified what admin.testargs passed in to me
4. I downloaded old directory services code and installed it luckily there was aversion for CS10.I had to because the otdsintegration module gets you web authentication but not web services authentication.
5. I put my computer on IPv4 to first test it
6. I made these changes to my opentext.ini
7. [Security]
8. #REM when you install directory services module you can get this ospace
9. Authentication=NTLM
   #REM when IPV6 is installed the crazy looking things is a oscript bug and its defeat by me found thru builder
   CGIHosts=::ffff:127.0.0.1,fe80::2d54:a6cb:b5d2:b145%11 I think the code is looking for socket.pPeeraddress
10. which is the address of the client in fact they should not do that but in IPv4 it is all OK
    #REM127.0.0.1 is added by livelink code but the computers IPv4 address
    #CGIHosts=
11. the Web.Config changed for NTLM for the livelink webservices  application

CLIENT CODE C# SETUP

1. App.Config reflected to the same NTLM auth as in Web.Config
2. Added System.IO
3. That is about it.

Client stack traces are almost impossible to understand unless you understood livelink code.Since I understood it and was able to understand what they were doing I am providing this.Your setup could vary I have no clue.

Link 1-Interested programmers could see my setup for CS10U6 here—

Link2-The C# solution containing a basic piece of code Kyle Swidrowich Created which I repurposed 🙂

Link3-Livelink Web.Config tthat you have to do for webservices

Link4-My experience when Livelink was 9.7.1wanted to write SSO code