External applications are those which are not deployed in you application server instance. Example is gmail application. You can access gmail accounts using http://mail.google.com. Such applications can be registered as external application in our Oracle Application Server 10g instance and access to such application can be made through SSO.
I have tried registering gmail as external application and I can access gmail without providing username and password once I login into SSO of my application server.
Here are the steps to do the same.
1) Connect to orasso application using http://(hostname):(infra http port)/pls/orasso
Example: http://ap101fam.us.oracle.com:7777/pls/orasso
login using orcladmin userID
2) Click on “SSO Server Administration”
3) Click on “Administer External Applications“
4) Click on “Add External Application“
On this page you have to provide following information
Application Name: Google Mail
Login URL: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?service=mail
User Name/ID Field Name: Email
Password Field Name: Passwd
Type of Authentication Used: POST
Here Application Name is any name that you can give.
Login URL you can find by going to mail.google.com in you browser and view -> Page Source. In this you can search for “action=” and you will get the URL. Put this URL in “Login URL” field.
For User Name/ID field, you can again view the source and seach for “Username“. You can put the name for this field in source file into User Name/ID field.
Note that name for Username field on gmail home page is “Email”. Also you have to put all other hidden attributes in “Additional Fields” section as given below.
Similarly, search for “Password” in the source page and put the name of Password field in “Password Field Name” in orasso page.
Once done, you can click on OK. You can see “Google Mail” link will appear in “Edit/Delete External Application” section. You can now click on that link and it will ask you for you Gmail username and password, you can provide the same as given below.
If you check “Remember My Login Information For This Application”, then you wont be asked for Gmail username and password from next time. SSO will store these username and password in OID and when even you login to SSO and click on “Google Mail” in external application, you will be taken to your inbox, without logging into google mail.
Hope this help !!
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