Maximo 7.6 and MSSQL Windows Authentication

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Recently, I have been asked by customers if Maximo supports the use of MSSQL Windows Authentication (i.e. integratedsecurity=true).

There is not much documentation from the Maximo perspective on the use of this integratedsecurity=true, so here is some information that I have discovered during my testing.

By default, Maximo uses a specified database user Maximo and password stored in the maximo.properties file. These credentials are then used to connect Maximo to the database (sql authentication).

Some organizations have a requirement to only have their SQL Server use Windows Authentication, hence the question, can we use integratedsecurity=true with Maximo?

Yes! we sure can. Here is how...

1) Download and update your server to use the the supported version of the SQL jdbc driver that supports windows authentication (preferably Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0).

For my testing, I set up a windows user maximowin that has been setup with windows authentication login for MSSQL server.

2) Follow the installation instructions to update the SQL driver used in Maximo.
a) In the <maximo install dir>\applications\maximo\lib directory backup the current SqlServer driver, sqljdbc.jar.
b) Copy the new sqljdbc4.jar from your installations to <maximo install dir>\applications\maximo\lib and rename it to sqljdbc.jar.

3) After that, copy the sqljdbc_auth.dll from SQL driver installation folder to \smp\maximo\tools\maximo directory.

a) Modify the maximo.properties with the mxe.db.url string to use integratedsecurity = true and re-encrypt the properties.

Modifying the Maximo.properties File in Release 7

b) Rebuild and redeploy the maximo.ear for the changes to take affect.

4) Modify the WebSphere dmgr and node services to Log On with the user that will be used to authenticate to you database. As the application will use this user to authenticate with the database.

a) Restart the maximo server.

5) Check your configuration works

a) {Maximo_home}\SMP\maximo\applications\maximo\version.bat

This should return the version installed successfully

b) {Maximo_home}\SMP\maximo\tools\maximo\updatedb.bat

Even though you have nothing that needs to be updated, it checks your connection to the database with authenticated security is OK.

c) Ensure you can log into Maximo and do not encounter any db connection issues.

I hope you have found this information useful.