SAP BTP Mobile Services Native/MDK App Authorization Concept

[aleksandrs_antonuks2]

Hi Experts,

I am currently working with SAP Mobile Services. I created Mobile Services instance on BTP. Established trust between these two platforms. Then I created native/MDK application that is utilizing Sample OData ESPM.

I kept all the default setting for the Security on the Mobile Cockpit for the application except for the enabling the anonymous access.

I created custom branded client and built it via Cloud Build. The app is installed to the android device. Nevertheless, when I install it, it is still asking for credentials to login to the Mobile Cockpit.

Is there or what is the way to distribute the application to people that will have access to neither BTP subaccount nor Mobile Cockpit.

I went through the documentation but is not really helpful for that topic.

Any feedback is really appreciated!

Br,
Aleks.  

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

MDK currently only supports OAuth2 for it's authentication mechanism.  We do not support an anonymous user connection.  Authentication is handled by the IdP configured in BTP so you can utilize an IdP either through IAS or another that would handle the authentication.

[aleksandrs_antonuks2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @bill_froelich, thank you for the information! I do not get the idea of the Security tab of the MDK app then. It has several security options, e.g., API Key, Basic, SAML, HTTP, etc. It has XSUAA settings, role settings, provides also option for the anonymous access - why all these options are there and how can these be used if is OAuth2 only and IdP needs to be configured via BTP?

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

Mobile Services is a generic collection of services to provide a common set of interfaces for your mobile applications. MDK is one type of application that can be created. You can also build a pure native application using the SAP BTP SDK for iOS or Android that uses Mobile Services.  As a broader generic collection from the Security tab it provides multiple options an application can utilized. 

Even though there are other security options that Mobile Services supports, the MDK client has decided to only supports OAuth2 at this point in time.  As this functionality is currently not available in MDK, I would suggest you to open a feature request here. We'll review it based on its priority.

[aleksandrs_antonuks2 · Accepted solution]

Thank you @bill_froelich for the clarification and the explanation! Appreciated!