EWS-Authentication performance compared to LAPI

Hi,

I've been playing with EWS for the past couple of days and have been bothered by the slowness of its Authentication. The line:

token = fAuthService.AuthenticateUser( "yyy", "****" );

takes about 5 seconds to execute.

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this and if there is something that can be done to make it work any faster.

Regards.

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Comments

sgrasley

I've seen the initial request (usually authentication) to the web services take a long time as the application server starts everything up, but subsequent requests are faster. Is this what you're seeing?

Scott

Michael_Grantham

Yes scott, that's exactly what I'm seeing. Our application usage scenario is such that we're going to have to do the authentication bit a number of times and not too much actual usage after that.

Do you think its worthwhile caching the authentication token for a set amount of time to workaround this problem?

Thanks,

Hiren

sgrasley

You can cache the authentication token, just keep in mind that it can expire based on the Content Server security settings. If you're making several calls as the same user within a reasonable amount of time, then I would definitely recommend reusing the authentication token.

Thanks,

Scott

Dan_Anderson

I am having a very similar scenario described above where my application that utilities Content Server Web Services could accept multiple requests (up to hundreds) within a short time all with the same user and password. Each request normally consists of collecting a small amount of data at a time (document content, category values, users/groups etc.) and then finishing.

I see you recommend caching the token which is a route that I will probably go too but I have another question. Isn’t it possible that using the cached token in any of the above methods could cause the token to change? Since we pass the OTAuthentication in as a reference, the documentation says that the token itself “could” change with any of these method calls.

Vanderpoel_Rob

Hi Dan,

I'm pretty new to this stuff but there's a GetSessionExpirationDate method on the authentication client which may be what you need:

Authentication.AuthenticationClient authClient = new Authentication.AuthenticationClient();

Authentication.OTAuthentication AuthAuth = new Authentication.OTAuthentication();

try

{

string username = "Admin";

string password = "Friday1234";

string token = authClient.AuthenticateUser(username, password);

Console.WriteLine("Authenticated");

if (token != null)

{

AuthAuth.AuthenticationToken = token;

Console.WriteLine(authClient.GetSessionExpirationDate(ref AuthAuth));

etc. etc.

I have checked and it does reflect the 'Expire nnn minutes after last request' setting for Cookie Authentication info in the Configure Security Parameters admin page. And it is empty if this is set to 'Never Expire'

Cheers

Rob