Installation Guides › Implementation Guide › Performance Tuning › Application Tier Performance › SOA Security Manager Policy Objects and Performance Roadmap › Realms

Realms

You can improve or degrade performance during authentication in the way you configure realms.

You group the resources in a domain into one or more realms. A realm is a set of resources (URLs) with a common security (authentication) requirement. The resource filter you define and the authentication scheme you select directly correlate to performance during authentication:

• The resource filter functions as the root of the protected resources. The Policy Server must evaluate the resource filter to determine if the requested resource is protected (IsProtected?).
• The authentication scheme associated with the realm determines the type of credentials users must present to gain access to the resources in the realm (IsAuthenticated?).

Realm settings also determine:

• How SOA Security Manager handles user sessions. SOA Security Manager creates a user session in the context of the realm to which the user authenticated against.
• If the realm can be used to control actions during authentication.

Note: For more information about realms, see the [set the co variable for your book]. For more information about authentication schemes, see the [set the co variable for your book].