Comments on: Wanted: a better proxy server

By: L&LR staff blog - Transatlantic Authentication Culture Gap (TACG)

L&LR staff blog - Transatlantic Authentication Culture Gap (TACG) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:22:36 +0000

[...] and I pick up the occasional blog post which opens a window onto this parallel universe (like this one about identifying users by role when authenticating via a proxy server [originally spotted on Planet Code4Lib], which echos debates ‘over here’ about [...]

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:55:28 +0000

Doug — good information, but my point is that I want to choose what group to identify with a user in realtime. When I’m trying to get to specific database XXX it should treat me as Ann Arbor faculty, but when trying to get to YYY I should be identified as a Flint student because (a) it knows I have both roles, and (b) it knows which role will give me greater access to each individual database.

By: Doug Eriksen

Doug Eriksen — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:21:23 +0000

I’m not the final word in EZproxy experts, but I don’t think anything on your list is outside the capabilities of EZproxy. Allowing different groups of users different levels of access is definitely possible, and routing users to their databases through your own EZproxy even when they are on another campus is simply a matter of instructing them to use your proxied links instead of going straight to the database or following a link from the other institution. I don’t deny there are still improvements that could be made to EZproxy, but I think it might be both the best proxy solution out there, and the best-at-its-own-job of any piece of software that I have to work with at my library.