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Forefront Management Agents - Web Service vs Database Connector

Answered Forefront Management Agents - Web Service vs Database Connector

  • Monday, February 18, 2013 9:10 AM
     
     
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    Hi,

    Can anyone give me some reasons why you would ever use the Database connector as opposed to the Web Service Connector to bring information in or out of FIM 2010 R2?  If we could develop web services in front of our Databases USING .NET, then is not the web service connector always the best option rather than linking directly to the  database itself?  

    Thanks

     

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  • Monday, February 18, 2013 9:19 AM
     
     
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    It is not clear to me if you are talking about your own data sources or db\ws access to FIM? If you are talking about your own data sources then it depends on the data source and interface, however if there is a web service for given data source I would go for web service as a first option to explore:

    Reason #1: Database structure can change ... and it changes often with updates. In opposition Web service interface stays the same.

    If you are thinking about going with FIM db directly or web service - reason #1 stays, and in addition

    Reason #2: direct accessing FIM DB is not supported AFAIK

    Reason#3: with web service calls you are getting entire policies applied which is main reason to have web service there 

    Tomek Onyszko, memberOf Predica FIM Team (http://www.predica.pl), IdAM knowledge provider @ http://blog.predica.pl

     
  • Monday, February 18, 2013 9:34 AM
     
     
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    Thanks Tomasz,

    Yes I'm talking about accessing our own data sources.  We have 2 Databases that will act as data authorities for FIM and downstream systems.  Both are Oracle.  We have already built some web services in front of one of these Databases.  Considering that FIM ships with an Oracle MA which will allow me to connect directly into the DB, we were wondering if it would be better to take some time to develop web services to extract the information we want in FIM, and then connect FIM using the web services Management Agent rather than directly to the databases themselves.  I think you have answered the question as yes - go for the web services?

     
  • Monday, February 18, 2013 9:59 AM
     
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    In that case with oracle MA you have to consider also following:

    - DB MA allows you to connect only to a view \ table. I don't know your database structure but sometimes this is not flexible enough and requires some complex views to be build on the DB side. In that case sometimes there are problems with updating database because of OleDB not being capable of updating that kind of view 

    - Depends on the scale - with both DB and WebService you might want to implement delta imports. Might be a bit easier to build it on top of web service but also can be achieved with DB MA alone. 

    Another option is to build dedicated MA for your application which will use your database with custom calls. 

    Tomek Onyszko, memberOf Predica FIM Team (http://www.predica.pl), IdAM knowledge provider @ http://blog.predica.pl

    • Marked As Answer by dellboy___ Monday, February 18, 2013 10:00 AM
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  • Monday, February 18, 2013 10:00 AM
     
     
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    Excellent.  Thanks very much for your help.