Defining and managing policy set bindings

Policy set bindings contain platform specific information, like keystore, authentication information or persistent information, required by a policy set attachment. Use this task to create and manage bindings.

About this task

There are two types of bindings, application specific bindings and general bindings.

Application specific bindings

You can create application specific bindings only at a policy set attachment point. These bindings are specific to and constrained to the characteristics of the defined policy. Application specific bindings are capable of providing configuration for advanced policy requirements, such as multiple signatures; however, these bindings are only reusable within an application. Furthermore, application specific bindings have very limited reuse across policy sets.

When you create an application specific binding for a policy set attachment, the binding begins in a completely unconfigured state. You must add each policy, such as WS-Security or HTTP transport, that you want to override the default binding and fully configure the bindings for each policy that you have added. For WS-Security policy, some high level configuration attributes such as TokenConsumer, TokenGenerator, SigningInfo, or EncryptionInfo might be obtained from the default bindings if they are not configured in the application specific bindings.

For service providers, you can only create application specific bindings by selecting Assign Binding > New Application Specific Binding for service provider resources that have an attached policy set. See service providers policy sets and bindings collection. Similarly, for service clients, you can only create application specific bindings by selecting Assign Binding > New Application Specific Binding for service client resources that have an attached policy set. See service client policy set and bindings collection.

General bindings

General bindings were introduced in Version 7.0. These bindings can be configured to be used across a range of policy sets and can be reused across applications and for trust service attachments. Though general bindings are highly reusable, they are however not able to provide configuration for advanced policy requirements, such as multiple signatures. There are two types of general bindings:

General provider policy set bindings
General client policy set bindings

You can create general policy set bindings by copying an existing binding or by creating a new one. For WS-Security bindings, copy an existing sample binding. Creating a new policy set binding from scratch for WS-Security can cause unexpected problems at run time.

To create general provider policy set bindings, in the administrative console, select Services > Policy sets > General provider policy set bindings > New or Copy. To create general client policy set bindings, select Services > Policy sets > General client policy set bindings > New or Copy.

For more information, see Defining and managing service client or provider bindings. General provider policy set bindings can also be used for trust service attachments.

Avoid trouble: After you make a copy of the provider or client sample bindings, customize only the settings of your new copy to suit your purposes. Do not remove anything from your binding copy, such as token generators, token consumers, sign parts, or encrypt parts. You can add things to your binding copy if needed, but deleting information can cause unanticipated errors at run time.

Important: The general bindings that are shipped with the product are provider and client sample bindings. These bindings are initially set as the cell default bindings. Do not use these bindings in their current state in a production environment. To use the sample bindings, modify them to meet your security needs in a production environment. Alternatively, create a copy of the bindings and then modify the copy. For example, change the key and keystore settings to ensure security, and modify other settings to match your environment. You must also configure the username and password for Username or LTPA token authentication. See the topic Configuring the username and password for WS-Security Username or LTPA token authentication for more information.

Depending on your assigned security role when security is enabled, you might not have access to text entry fields or buttons to create or edit configuration data. Review the administrative roles documentation to learn more about the valid roles for the application server.

To view or work with your current policy sets bindings, perform the following:

Procedure

To view your current policy set and application specific bindings from the administrative console, click Services > Policy sets > Application policy sets >policy_set_name > Attached applications and then click an application.
Depending on the application that you select, you can manage the bindings attached to the following policy sets:
- Service provider policy sets and bindings
- Service client policy sets and bindings
To learn more about managing the bindings attached to policy sets, see the service provider or service client policy sets and bindings information.

Sort on the Attached policy set column on either of the policy sets and bindings pages to select the service resources with the same policy set attached. Likewise, sort on the Binding column to select the service resources that share the same custom binding to attach to a different policy set. If you sort on the Policy Set or the Binding column, the hierarchical relationship of the service resources in the first column is not accurate. You can sort again on the Application/Service/Endpoint/Operation column to restore the hierarchical relationship. The entries in the Application/Service/Endpoint/Operation column display in ascending order.
To work with an existing bindings from the administrative console, click Services > Policy sets > Application policy sets >policy_set_name > Attached applications. Click an application name, and then click either the Service provider policy sets and bindings or the Service client policy sets and bindings. Then click a binding name in the Bindings column of the table.
Note: If no applications appear when you click Attached applications, you do not have any applications attached to the selected policy set. To attach a policy set and binding to an application using the administrative console, click Applications > Enterprise Applications > application name. Then, click either Service provider policy sets and bindings or Server client policy sets and bindings to attach resources to your policy set and to assign bindings.

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[Optional] To work with general bindings, click Services > Policy sets > General client policy set bindings or Services > Policy sets > General provider policy set bindings.
You can complete the following actions for general bindings:

Results

When you finish this task, you would have performed one or more of the following:

Created an application specific or general policy set binding
Imported a policy set binding
Exported a policy set binding
Deleted a policy set binding
Modified an application attachment to apply an application specific binding for single security domain
Modified an application attachment to apply an application specific binding for multiple security domain