HP-UX SNAplus2 R7 APPC Programmer's Guide

Writing Transaction Programs

Starting TPs

2.8 Overview of Conversation Security

You can use conversation security to require that the invoking TP provide a user ID and password before APPC

allocates a conversation with the invoked TP.

In conﬁguring the invoked TP, the System Administrator indicates whether to use conversation security. If so, the

invoking TP must supply a combination of

user_id and password as parameters of the [MC_]ALLOCATE verb.

These parameters must match one of the combinations of user_id and password parameters established during

conﬁguration.

An invoked TP that in turn invokes another TP is a special case (see Chapter 1, Concepts). Assume that TP A

invokes TP B, which requires security information, and TP B in turn invokes TP C, which also requires security

information. Through the [MC_]ALLOCATE verb, TP B can specify that conversation security has already been

veriﬁed. In this case, APPC takes the user ID that was supplied by TP A to TP B, and sends this user ID to TP C

with an “already veriﬁed” indication; TP C does not need to check the password.

UNIX

In some cases, a TP may need to indicate “already veriﬁed” security when it has not itself been invoked by another

TP, but has obtained and veriﬁed the appropriate security information by another means (for example, by a user

entering a user ID and password during a logon sequence). SNAplus2 supports this as follows:

• If the TP specifying “already veriﬁed” was itself invoked by another TP that speciﬁed a user ID and password,

APPC sends this user ID.

• Otherwise, APPC takes the HP-UX user name with which the TP is running, truncated to 10 characters if

necessary, and uses this as the conversation security user ID. Ensure that this name consists of valid AE-string

characters and is a valid user name for the TP being invoked.

• If the application uses a different method of obtaining the security information (for example, if it requires the

user to specify a user ID and password explicitly, rather than relying on the HP-UX system security), then it

can use the SET_TP_PROPERTIES verb to specify this user_id to APPC before issuing the [MC_]ALLOCATE

verb.

SNAplus2 also supports LU-LU session security, which provides security checking when starting the session be-

tween the local and remote APPC LUs. LU-LU session security is speciﬁed during conﬁguration, and does not

require any action in APPC programs. For more information, refer to the HP-UX SNAplus2 Administration Guide.

2.9 Starting TPs

A conversation occurs between an invoking TP and an invoked TP. This section describes how the invoking and

invoked TPs are started.

2.9.1 Invoking TPs

The invoking TP is started by a user entering a command, by a shell script, or by batch ﬁle command.

2.9.2 Invoked TPs

The invoked TP can be started by a user, automatically by SNAplus2, or automatically by a TP server application.

When the System Administrator conﬁgures each invoked TP, the System Administrator must specify whether the

TP is started automatically or by the user.