net.jini.core.constraint

Class ServerAuthentication

java.lang.Object

net.jini.core.constraint.ServerAuthentication

All Implemented Interfaces:

Serializable, InvocationConstraint

public final class ServerAuthentication
extends Object
implements InvocationConstraint, Serializable

Represents a constraint on authentication of the server to the client.

Network authentication by a server (to a client) is implementation-specific, but typically is also scoped and controlled by a Subject. The server subject normally is contained in the Exporter used to export that remote object and is taken from the current thread when the exporter is constructed. However, a server might use one subject to control its local execution and a different subject to control its network authentication. A server generally must have permission (such as AuthenticationPermission) to authenticate itself to clients.

It is important to understand that specifying ServerAuthentication.YES as a requirement does not ensure that a server is to be trusted; it does ensure that the server authenticates itself as someone, but it does not ensure that the server authenticates itself as anyone in particular. Without knowing who the server authenticated itself as, there is no basis for actually trusting the server. The client generally needs to specify a ServerMinPrincipal requirement in addition, or else verify that the server has specified a satisfactory ServerMinPrincipal requirement for each of the methods that the client cares about.

Serialization for this class is guaranteed to produce instances that are comparable with ==.

Since:

2.0

Author:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

See Also:

ServerMinPrincipal, AuthenticationPermission, Serialized Form

Field Summary

Fields

Modifier and Type	Field and Description
static ServerAuthentication	NO Do not authenticate the server to the client, so that the server remains anonymous.
static ServerAuthentication	YES Authenticate the server to the client.

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor and Description
ServerAuthentication(AtomicSerial.GetArg arg)

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
String	toString() Returns a string representation of this object.

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, wait, wait, wait

Field Detail

YES

public static final ServerAuthentication YES

Authenticate the server to the client. The mechanisms and credentials used to authenticate the server are not specified by this constraint.

NO

public static final ServerAuthentication NO

Do not authenticate the server to the client, so that the server remains anonymous.

Constructor Detail

ServerAuthentication

public ServerAuthentication(AtomicSerial.GetArg arg)
                     throws IOException

Throws:

IOException

Method Detail

toString

public String toString()

Returns a string representation of this object.

Overrides:

toString in class Object