DCM Application Definitions

Digital Certificate Manager (DCM) manages an application database that contains application definitions. Each application definition encapsulates certificate processing information for a specific application. As of the IBM® i 7.1 release, the application definition also encapsulates some System SSL attributes for the application. System SSL users know this application definition as an “Application ID.”

Many of the IBM i provided applications use application definitions to configure certificate information for their application. Any application developer can design an application to use application definitions.

The DCM application definition contains two fields that are used to identify it. The Application description field is used to find and interact with the application definition in DCM. The Application ID field is used by System SSL to identify the application definition that holds the configuration information.

Each of the following System SSL programming interfaces has a method for identifying the “Application ID” to use.
  • Global Security Kit (GSKit) APIs
    • gsk_attribute_set_buffer(with attribute GSK_IBMI_APPLICATION_ID)
  • Integrated IBM i SSL_ APIs
    • SSL_Init_Application(set value in struct SSLInitAppStr)
  • Integrated IBM i JSSE implementation
    • Set the Java™ system property os400.secureApplication

The following DCM application definition fields can be used to control the corresponding System SSL attributes of an application: