Programming Guides › Programming Guide for C › Authentication API › Authentication API Overview › User Context

User Context

An authentication scheme verifies the user credentials passed to it by SiteMinder and returns the authentication result. An authentication scheme operates in these modes:

• User context is unknown—The user has yet to be located in the user store. Either SiteMinder or the authentication scheme looks up the user so that the user's stored credentials can be compared with the credentials supplied at login.

  Looking up the user in the user store is called user disambiguation.

• User context is known—The user has been located in the user store. The custom authentication scheme can now verify the user's credentials.