Security - eXist: A NoSQL Database and Application Development Platform - page 141

eXist extends the Unix model for user groups, and introduces the concept of group
managers . Members of a group in eXist may be promoted to managers of that group;
in fact, the first member of any group (i.e., the creating user) is automatically set up
as the first group manager.
Group managers share control of the group, and may perform several actions upon
the group:
• Adding or removing members to or from the group, including other group
managers
• Promoting or demoting members of the group to or from group managers
• Modifying the metadata of the group
• Deleting the group, and therefore removing all members from the group
As group managers maintain complete control of the group and its
membership, it is important that they all share the same trust rela‐
tionship. If you were a group manager, it would be inadvisable to
promote someone else to a group manager if you did not trust her,
as she could effectively remove you and take control of the group.
Tools for User and Group Management
So now that you have a good grounding in the basic security concepts involved in
eXist, how do you actually apply these by creating and managing users and groups?
In eXist there are often several ways to achieve the same goal, depending on how you
want to approach the problem. Security configuration is no exception: there are at
least five possible ways to manage users and groups in eXist.
Using the Java Admin Client
eXist ships with an admin client application written in Java (see “The Java Admin
Client” on page 29 ) that provides an excellent user management facility to make
working with users and groups simple. This is the tool we will focus on in “User and
Group Management with the Java Admin Client” on page 145 . The User Manager is
available via the Tools menu in the Java Admin Client, as you can see in Figure 8-2 .