Web Services Based Authentication System for E-Learning
Akram Alkouz, Samir Abou El-Seoud, Princess Sumaya · 2007
In Distance Learning end users need to access different e-learning platforms daily to gain the knowledge. E- learning platforms implement authentication system to handle the authentication and authorization processes. As the number of directory stores grows the development overhead of user's authentication process in e-learning platforms against those directories increases. Also as the number of e-learning platforms grows, the number of user's IDs and passwords users have to memorize grows as well. So users make passwords not strong enough to ease memorization, and write passwords in clear text in insecure places, which compromise the security. An outline of various aspects of design and implementation of web services based authentication system for e-learning platforms (WSAS) is presented in this paper. The architecture provides e-learning platforms users with a single sign-on solution for the problem of memorizing many user IDs and passwords, provides organizations with a centralized, simple, and efficient directory stores access mechanism to simplify the process of integrating multiple directory stores, and provides the e-learning platforms developers with a standard solution to minimize the development overhead of the authentication process against multiple directory stores, the presented prototype architecture designed based on the existing web services technology, so that clients need not be modified, and servers may have a little modifications.