OK ASP.NET gurus - I have a problem (James - are you reading this?).

We're using integrated Windows security for the project at work, which of course means that if you try to connect from outside the organisation you get the attractive Windows login dialog box up before you can gain access to the system. So far so good. Or not. You see the customer likes beautiful applications, applications with elegant user interfaces that demonstrate the professionalism and quality of the organisation to their external partners and customers. Imagine this application was requested by Steve Jobs himself - you get the idea.

So, they don't want the Windows login dialog box to appear. What they want is for external users to connect through a Windows forms login page and then, providing they enter the correct information, they are authenticated and run under their actual Windows Active Directory credentials. It's kinda important, since behind the scenes we want to use the current user's credentials in web service calls and not have to keep hitting an authentication component to grab them as we would if we were running under an impersonated account.

So, how do you achieve this? I have a feeling it's an ISAPI filter but it's a LOOOoooonng time since I last wrote one of them. Help!

8:23:00 PM    

Darren Neimke has posted up some links to the newly published SQL Server 2005 pricing models. No release date that I could see though. Since SQL Server 2005 includes ADO.NET 2.0 and presumably makes use of the .NET 2.0 runtime it will be interesting to see if the product is released before, or alongside, Visual Studio.NET 2005 (Whidbey).

10:39:35 AM