OpenIDM Integrator's Guide
Chapter 1. Architectural Overview

The core services are the heart of the OpenIDM resource oriented unified object model and architecture.

Object Model

Artifacts handled by OpenIDM are Java object representations of the JavaScript object model as defined by JSON. The object model supports interoperability and potential integration with many applications, services and programming languages. As OpenIDM is a Java-based product, these representations are instances of classes: Map, List, String, Number, Boolean, and null.

OpenIDM can serialize and deserialize these structures to and from JSON as required. OpenIDM also exposes a set of triggers and functions that system administrators can define in JavaScript which can natively read and modify these JSON-based object model structures. OpenIDM is designed to support other scripting and programming languages.

Managed Objects

A managed object is an object that represents the identity-related data managed by OpenIDM. Managed objects are configurable, JSON-based data structures that OpenIDM stores in its pluggable repository. The default configuration of a managed object is that of a user, but you can define any kind of managed object, for example, groups or roles.

You can access managed objects over the REST interface with a query similar to the following:

       $ curl
         --header "X-OpenIDM-Username: openidm-admin"
         --header "X-OpenIDM-Password: openidm-admin"
         --request GET
         "http://localhost:8080/openidm/managed/..."
       

System Objects

System objects are pluggable representations of objects on external systems. For example, a user entry that is stored in an external LDAP directory is represented as a system object in OpenIDM.

System objects follow the same RESTful resource-based design principles as managed objects. They can be accessed over the REST interface with a query similar to the following:

       $ curl
         --header "X-OpenIDM-Username: openidm-admin"
         --header "X-OpenIDM-Password: openidm-admin"
         --request GET
         "http://localhost:8080/openidm/system/..."
       

There is a default implementation for the OpenICF framework, that allows any connector object to be represented as a system object.

Mappings

Mappings define policies between source and target objects and their attributes during synchronization and reconciliation. Mappings can also define triggers for validation, customization, filtering, and transformation of source and target objects.

See the Configuring Synchronization chapter for details.

Synchronization & Reconciliation

Reconciliation provides for on-demand and scheduled resource comparisons between the OpenIDM managed object repository and source or target systems. Comparisons can result in different actions depending on the mappings defined between the systems.

Synchronization provides for creating, updating, and deleting resources from a source to a target system either on demand or according to a schedule.

See the Configuring Synchronization chapter for details.