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52North Security WSC.Desktop

WSC.Desktop

Access protected services via a local proxy!

Quick Intro

Summary
This chapter guides you through the steps of setting up the WSC.Desktop application and access a WMS protcede by the 52°North Demo WSS.

Requirements

  • Internet connection
  • Java 6 JRE installation

Download and Install WSC.Desktop

  1. Download WSC.Desktop
  2. Unzip the downloaded file
  3. Either run run.bat (Windows) or run.sh (Unix) in the unzipped folder to start the application

Managing the Facade Server

By default WSC.Desktop listens for requests on http://<local_hostname>:1234/facadeServer.

Click Edit to change the port, hostname, or path where facades are served. Click Apply to save your changes and restart the server.

Managing Facades

With WSC.Desktop, facades define local URLs that provide access to a protected service on the internet via the native WSS security protocol. When creating a facade you also specify the user's credentials that are sent to the protected service.

Example
The facade called alices is bound to the URL http://localhost:1234/facades/alices. It uses username/password alice/alice to connect to the WSS with the URL http://security.demo.52north.org:8180/wss/service/wms_demis/WSS

By clicking New you start creating a new facade for a certain user:

  1. Click New
  2. Enter the server URL of the 52°North Demo WSS http://security.demo.52north.org:8180/wss/service/wms_demis/WSS which offers proteced access to the Demis WMS.
  3. Click Connect to connect to the WSS.

    If you get an error please check your internet connection and/or proxy settings, that you may need to pass to the JVM

  4. Enter alice for username and password.
  5. Enter a facade name. This will be part of the resulting facade's URL.
  6. Click Save to create and save the facade
  7. Click Cancel to skip creating other facades.

The facade is now displayed in the table of facades.

Using Facades

As part of this quick intro we will use the facade to request the capabilities of the protected service with a browser.

  1. Open a browser window.
  2. In WSC.Desktop highlight the facade just created in the table of available facades.
  3. Click Copy Facade URL
  4. Paste the URL into the browser address bar and append ?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities
  5. Hit enter

As a result the browser should display the WMS's capabilities. Please notice, that all URLs within the capabilities document were replaced by URLs pointing to the facade.

You can load the protected service in any local desktop client that is able to connect to WMS like uDig or ESRI(c) ArcMap.