Configuring Rational DOORS Web Access to use SSL or TLS

You can configure your Rational® DOORS® Web Access server to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS), which provide secure communications between servers and clients or browsers. The configuration involves setting Rational DOORS Web Access to use HTTPS and enabling the HTTPS Connector in the Apache Tomcat server that comes with the product.

Before you begin

To enable Rational DOORS Web Access to use SSL or TLS, you need a security certificate and a keystore that contains the server certificate. For testing purposes, you can use the sample security certificate that is included with Rational DOORS Web Access. The Apache Tomcat server.xml file is configured by default to use the sample certificate. You can also generate your own security certificate for testing purposes. For production purposes, purchase a certificate from a trusted certificate authority.

When you purchase a certificate, install it on the Apache Tomcat server by following the instructions from your certificate vendor. If problems occur when you install the certificate, contact the certificate vendor. Then modify the server.xml file as described in this topic.

To generate your own certificate for testing purposes, you can create and manage a keystore by using the Java™ keytool utility. See Generating keystores and certificates for Rational DOORS Web Access. In addition to that utility, you can use other resources on the Internet to create a certificate and install it on the Tomcat server.

Before you change the configuration, you must stop the Rational DOORS Web Access server. See the procedures for shutting down the server in Starting, stopping, and removing Rational DOORS Web Access.

Before you update your configuration files, back them up.

Note: When you finish this procedure, you must restart Rational DOORS and Rational DOORS Web Access. If you are reconfiguring a production system, be sure to schedule enough downtime.

About this task

After you have the keystore, follow this procedure to configure the Tomcat server that comes with Rational DOORS Web Access to use HTTPS with the keystore. Then, reconfigure Rational DOORS Web Access to use HTTPS.

Procedure

In the installation directory for your Rational DOORS Web Access server, go to the server/festival/config directory and open the festival.xml file.
In the <f:properties> section of the file, set the ForceHttpsForAuthenticationForOAuth property to true.
Save and close the file.
In the installation directory of your Rational DOORS Web Access server, go to the server/conf directory and open the server.xml file.
Attention: Be careful when you change the server.xml file because incorrect edits can lead to a complete loss of system function. Before you edit the file, back it up. For more information about configuring HTTPS and about other methods of configuration, see the Tomcat documentation.
Go to the section that contains the HTTPS Connector and do the tasks that are relevant to your security needs, as documented in the Apache Tomcat Configuration Reference for the HTTP Connector. Change the HTTPS Connector as shown in this example and described in the list below.
```
<Connector URIEncoding="UTF-8" 
         clientAuth="false" 
         port="8443"
         scheme="https"  
         minSpareThreads="5" 
         enableLookups="true" 
         acceptCount="100" 
         maxThreads="200"         
         secure="true" 
         SSLEnabled="true"
         keystoreFile="localhost.keystore" 
         keystorePass="doorsdwa"
         clientAuth="true"
         truststoreFile="client-keystore.jks"
         truststorePass="doorsdwa"
         SSLVerifyClient="require"
         SSLEngine="on"
         SSLVerifyDepth="2"
         sslProtocol="TLS"
         algorithm="IbmX509"
         compression="on" 
         noCompressionUserAgents="gozilla, traviata" 
         compressableMimeType="text/html,text/xml,text/css,text/plain,text/javascript,application/javascript,application/x-javascript"    
     />
```
The following list presents important tasks; for more HTTP Connector options, see the Apache Tomcat documentation.
- Configure the server to use HTTPS on port 8443. The default HTTPS port for the Tomcat server and Rational DOORS Web Access is 8443. To use a different HTTPS port, replace 8443 with the custom port in the server.xml file and in all of the Rational DOORS Web Access configuration files that refer to 8443 as the HTTPS port.
- You can modify the HTTPS Connector code to use your security certificate by changing the keystore location (keystoreFile) and password (keystorePass), which are shown in bold type in the example above.
- Configure the Tomcat server to enable SSL. Optionally, you can set the sslProtocol value to specify a TLS version for the SSL protocol; for example, sslProtocol="TLSv1.2". With the default value of sslProtocol="TLS", the client and server can negotiate the highest version of TLS that they are both capable of supporting. If you specify a version, refer to vendor documentation to determine whether your browser supports that version.
Save and close the server.xml file.
Reconfigure the Rational DOORS server to use the correct Rational DOORS Web Access HTTPS URL by running dbadmin at a command prompt, as described in Configuring the Rational DOORS database server.
Restart Rational DOORS and Rational DOORS Web Access.