Question

I want to create a web-app (a website) used in house by staff only.

I want to use active directory membersip provider to authenticate users.
The thing that is confusing me is how do I manage profiles and roles, and also link users with a FK to other tables.

So far Im thinking of doing something like this but not sure if it is even possible?

• use Windows authentication (set in web.config)
• use activedirectorymembership provider + sqlmembership provider?
• Register users the first time they hit the site (get their email, name, etc from AD and create user in code and add to sql db)
• Everytime they re-hit the site, check the db if the user exists, if they do, log them in, if not create a new user in sqlmembership.
• for all other tables use userid from Aspnet_User as an FK in other tables

Will this even work? or is there a better obvious way of doing this?

Thanks

Answer 1

When using the ActiveDirectory Membership provider, you’re authenticating your users against your Active Directory – there’s no separate membership database involved (the user accounts are in Active Directory).

The role provider is using the Active Directory/Windows security groups and a user’s membership in those groups – again: no separate role database / table involved.

If you want to use the Active Directory provider, then each new user coming to your site would need to be added to your Active Directory as a regular user account.

You cannot use both membership providers at the same time – either you’re going against your AD and use the user accounts and groups defined there – (exclusive) OR you’re rolling your own, and store user accounts and roles and user’s membership in roles in a separate SQL Server database.