This is one of the cool features for integrating different application in an organization; It gives flexibility to sign on one time and use with different application.
I could say Single sign-on is an independent session management entity for cross application Identity, to validate and access provider.
Pros I found:
a) No need to sign to different application.
b) Easy to move from one application to another application.
c) Develop once and use many times, Increases productivity.
Cons of this:
Huu I could see major bottleneck, loose your password for one application and you are giving access to all other applications which are associated with it.
There are separate application for single sign-on management,
eTrust single sign on (http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Product.asp?ID=166) is one of the famous.
dotNet has given easy solution for passport integration with different application, so you can even use this, more concern is you have to put the data on Microsoft server for this, which is never accepted for most of the companies.
The simplest way to develop this is to have a “Web Service” .
We need to put more code for “Expiring, Auto Redirecting, re-validating “ etc etc.
If we want to have some think like enterprise level, then there are little more scope of
“Digital certificates / secured encryption “ …
Is this enough to beat eTrust..? J
Looks it has more dynamic attribute assignment, Flexible session management.
Let me ask my first prospect customer (Microsoft) to evaluate this pre-development scope…J