Conceptual: Users, Authors, People (Groups, Roles)

[Manfred Kröpfli]

Hi all

I like to know, how the concepts of users, authors and people (resp. groups and roles) functionally relate to eachother.

I understand:
1) user (group) reates to access control
2) author property repesents the creator (or modifier?) of an element
3) people (project author, project role) relate to organisational aspects

What has to be defined for a human user, who uses a security enabled project? Are there functional relations inside EA between a user and a project author, which I (as a EA administrator) should be aware of?

I want to make sure that every element update reflects itself in the element's standard Author property.

Additional background information:
Using the C# API, I want to be able to set the element author using:

Code: [Select]

Element.Author = <string>;[/color]
which does not work for me until now. Which prerequisites do I have to asure?

Thanks for any enlightening links and hints
Manfred

[Manfred Kröpfli]

Here is the solution to the background problem:

Code: [Select]

Element.Author = <string>;
Element.Update();
Any hints to the main questions on users, authors and people?

Cheers
Manfred

[«Midnight»]

Hi Manfred,

AFAIK there is no enforced relationship between any of the attributes you mention and the 'users' that EA security handles. This makes a bit more sense when you consider that the attributes are meant to be read by your audience, so are free-form 'friendly' strings like people's names or job titles. EA security works at the user ID level, with things like account names and such. These are also less likely to change, and you would not necessarily think of them as free-form text.

As for how to handle security-related issues from the API, look at the Repository.ChangeLoginUser method. You'll see that this can affect the permissions that EA grants to a user without restarting the application.

I do not know of a way to set security information - grant or deny privileges - from the API.

David