How to get ASPNET to be recognized as a Trusted Connection by SQL Server 2005

Question

Here's the situaiton. I'm working on developing a new website to access an old database. This is a DoD installation so there's lots of security around.

The current application is written in classic ASP, VBScript and some javascript. The new systems is ASP.NET.

Accessing the database in the old system meant hitting the server with your own credentials (domainname\username). Now I'm trying to test some of the early development I've done. When I used Cassini (under VS2008), I had no trouble getting to the database because ourdomain\myusername registered with the SQL Server instance as a trusted connection. Due to security aspects that I have to write, Cassini can't serve as a test server anymore - I have to use IIS (we have security card readers here). Cassini can't handle them.

So when I went through all the problems of getting the appropriate accounts added to Administrators on my local pc so that I could debug in VS2008 while using IIS, I tried to connect to the database and I was rejected because MYPC\ASPNET was not a trusted connection.

Altering the existing database is out of the question. Hard coding usernames and passwords for access to the database is out of the question.

I asked the DBA if he could add MYPC\ASPNET to of the domain groups so that SQL Server could see it as a trusted connection (since MYDOMAIN\MYNAME was in a group that was seen as a trusted connection). He tells me that is not technically possible.

In the end there are going to be three or four machines (mine, another developer, the eventual live web server and a future test web server) who's ASPNET accounts are going to be hitting our two SQL servers (live and test).

What do I have to do to make the existing SQL server see me as Friend and not Foe? I looked at impersonation but I get the impression it's not compatible with our system - the business rules make a call to a common routine to create a SqlConnection object and open it (maybe even a SqlTransaction object to go with it) and this object is used for the rest of the business rules and data-access layer until it's done. It didn't look like impersonation would persist once the SqlConnection was opened (and passed, ByRef back to the calling routine)

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Answer 1

Use Impersonation

Answer 2

Sounds like you want to impersonate the client who is accessing your web site correct? Have you tried to use impersonation or are you assuming it won't work?

Edit

As Albert points out, impersonation requires the user to be authenticated using Windows authentication. You will want to disable Anonymous Access, and enable Windows Authentication in IIS Management tool.

Answer 3

You have two options:

1. Run your web application in an application pool configured to run in the context of a domain account
2. Use impersonation and configure your web application to use windows authentication only

Answer 4

As has already been suggested you should use impersonation.

However if your SQL Server is running on a different machine than your web server then impersonation will not suffice as the credentials of the user will not be delegated to the SQL Server (server hop). In that case you will have to either enable delegation in the AD or create a non-Windows login on your SQL Server and use that instead (this will not work if your SQL Server actually uses the Windows login for access control to tables etc.).