Authorisation from third party Data base

Question

I am getting authenticated from a third party database.Could you provide me a best method for the authorisation in sharepoint using the third party Database. Is there any way that i can import the user information from the third party database into the sharepoint?.

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satyam

Answer 1

Firstly you should be using Forms Based Authentication (FBA) if you are not already doing so, for which details are mentioned at 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262201.aspx

What FBA do it allows to get your users authenticated from the database ,whose providers are available and properly configured. Providers that comes with ASP.NET 2.0 can be used readily , for your third party you need to check for the provider coresponding to your third party database. If its available you can use it otherwise you need to write one. See the link below for custom providers

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479048.aspx

http://www.devx.com/asp/Article/29256  

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/101905-1.aspx

On the SharePoint side, the main thing to understand is that, SharePoint is really only doing the authorization and basically it maintains the list of users inside a hidden list called "User Information List" , its hidden because generally you dont suppose to access it directly. No password is store in this list.

Now in case you really want to import the users from your thrid party database , meaning take them out from and import them  to SharePoint , what you can do is to user SharePont List as a place to store the users , in this case SharePoint List will act essentially as Database Table. You can take a look codeplex project which allows using SharePoint list for this purpose http://www.codeplex.com/SPListMP. 

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