J2EE integration with .NET for authentication

Question

I have a Java Enterprise Edition web application, a standard WAR. I want to integrate this with an existing .NET infrastructure running IIS. To be specific, I need to be able to share user sessions between the two applications in some secure manner.

Is there a "standard" way of doing this?

Edit: I do not need full session sharing, sorry for not pointing that out. What I need to be able to do is to check if a user is authenticated with the .NET application when she connects to the J2EE application.

Answer 1

Very doubtful.

You'd have to persist session state to a third component, such as a database. I doubt that the built-in providers for either infrastructure are at all similar (as far as schemas, etc); so you'd like have to create your own.

This does not sound like it would be a fun thing to do.

Answer 2

Create a .NET web service (using WCF, of course) to return whether a user is authenticated. Then call that web service from the J2EE application.

Answer 3

If they will run on the same server, you will need an isapi redirect filter, like the isapi_redirect.dll that comes with Tomcat.

Answer 4

This open source library, http://spnego.sourceforge.net, will enable your java app to do transparent/integrated windows authentication.

It's installed as a servlet filter so you will not have to write any code.