title: OpenSSO/OpenAM alternatives
body: <p>Warning!  I'm on a bit of a fishing trip here, and I'm not even sure if the questions that I'm asking entirely make sense.  Please be kind with your responses!  :)</p>
  
  <p>I recently took over a project that is currently based on a Java + Linux + Tomcat + MySQL.  Right now, the system is basically just a website with a few cron jobs in the back-ground to move some data around, etc.  In working with the product manager to develop a prioritized backlog, it’s clear from what he wants to do that I need to start developing a service-oriented architecture (SOA  &lt;-- buzz word warning!), and I will end up with a blend of web servers and application servers.  Note: I’m strongly considering moving to Glassfish v3.</p>
  
  <p>Currently, authentication and authorizations are handled in Java code with user information being stored in the MySQL database.  At the bare minimum, it seems to me that I will need to split this out into a separate authentication service (otherwise, will end up with a bunch of duplicate code all over the place to handle user authentication and authorizations).  </p>
  
  <p>I’ve been looking into single sign-on (SSO) <em>type</em> solutions and doing some research.  From what I can gather, OpenSSO has been officially dropped by Oracle, but picked up by ForgeRock and now is called OpenAM.  This appears to be very close to what I want, but since I already have a MySQL-based system, I would prefer to have something that supports it (or some other kind of RDBMS).  I found this on Stack Overflow and it seems to indicate that it’s basically LDAP or nothing.  </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3802182/is-there-a-way-to-make-opensso-openam-talk-to-database-for-its-authentication-and">Is there a way to make OpenSSO/OpenAM talk to Database for its authentication and authorization?</a></p>
  
  <p>My questions are:</p>
  
  <p>What other options are out there to OpenSSO/OpenAM?  Is LDAP the way to go?  Note: doing a “OpenAM vs” google search doesn’t yield much.  Do people tend to just “roll their own”?  </p>
  
  <p>Any thoughts/suggestions/links on this topic that will help educate me will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance for your patience and help.</p>