12.4 Overview of Provisioning Methodologies

This section describes the procedures for provisioning users in Oracle Identity Management. It contains these topics:

Provisioning Users from the Provisioning Console
Provisioning Users that are Synchronized from an External Source
Provisioning Users Created with Command-Line LDAP Tools
Bulk Provisioning
On-Demand Provisioning
Application Bootstrapping

12.4.1 Provisioning Users from the Provisioning Console

You can use the Provisioning Console to centrally manage user provisioning and deprovisioning of one or more users simultaneously. The console includes a wizard-based interface for creating, modifying, and deleting individual users, and for selectively provision and deprovision users for any provisioning-integrated applications. The Provisioning Console also supports bulk user creation, modification, and deletion of users from an LDIF file. See "Bulk Provisioning" for more information.

12.4.2 Provisioning Users that are Synchronized from an External Source

When Oracle Internet Directory is used as a central repository and enterprise user entries are synchronized from third-party directories to Oracle Internet Directory, each user identity is automatically provisioned according to the default provisioning policy of each provisioning-integrated application.

12.4.3 Provisioning Users Created with Command-Line LDAP Tools

Any tools developed by Oracle or third-party vendors that use standard command-line LDAP tools can create user entries in Oracle Internet Directory. As with user entries that are synchronized from external sources, any user entries created with command-line LDAP tools or any other means are provisioned according to the default provisioning policies for each provisioning-integrated application.

12.4.4 Bulk Provisioning

You can use the Provisioning Console or the Directory Integration and Provisioning Assistant to create and provision user entries by providing an LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format) file containing user data. The LDIF file should contain only LDAP-specific attributes. When user entries in an LDIF file are created in Oracle Internet Directory, each entry is provisioned according to the default provisioning policy of each provisioning-integrated application.

12.4.5 On-Demand Provisioning

On-demand provisioning occurs when a user attempts to access an application and the application has no knowledge of the user in its repository. The application determines whether to provision a user account based on its default provisioning policies. After provisioning a user account in its repository, an application will update the provisioning status of the user entry in Oracle Internet Directory.

12.4.6 Application Bootstrapping

The Oracle Provisioning Service notifies newly registered applications of all existing user entries in Oracle Internet Directory and attempts to provision each existing user entry as if they were a new user in the application.