Abstract

The Documentum Login ASP.NET control provides a UI for authenticating with a Documentum Repository. The UI includes text boxes for username, password, domain and a drop down list of repositories. The control can be placed in the Visual Studio toolbox and can be dragged-dropped onto a webform.

Description

Login is a common function that every Documentum application needs. Login creates a Documentum session that can be used to access the repository. When developing web applications to access Documentum, a mapping needs to be made between the user's HTTP request and the Documentum session. The ASP.NET HttpSessionState class can be used to store this mapping. For more information read the 'Session Management and Documentum Context - A Refresher' section (please omit the 'Login Control' section) from the article 'ASP.NET Sample Application Session Management and Login'.

The login control is a custom ASP.NET control that provides a reusable UI for login to Documentum. Developer's can drag-drop the control from the Visual Studio toolbox. The control will draw the standard textboxes for username, password, domain and a dropdown list of visible repositories obtained from the configured Connection Broker.



Fig - Desgin View - Login Control





Fig - Runtime View - Login Control

The login control defines one event 'OnSuccessfulLogin', which is also the default event for the control. Thus, double-clicking on the login control in the form designer view will open up the handler for this event in the code view. Custom code can be written in this event-handler. If a login is successful, the login control registers the identity with DmContext class instance of the user. The DmContext instance can be accessed from the user's HttpSessionState. Other controls that need to access the repository can obtain the session from the user's DmContext instance. More information about the DmContext class can be obtained from 'Session Management and Documentum Context' article mentioned earlier.



Fig - OnSuccessfulLogin

The button text and the title text can be changed from the properties view of Visual Studio. The properties corresponding to these are 'ButtonText' and 'Title' respectively.

The login control is a composite control containing ASP.NET table, label, text box and button controls. It can participate in ASP.NET 2.0 Skins by defining themes for button, label, text box and table controls. Please refer to the ASP.NET 2.0 documentation for more information on skins.