I currently work at a manufacturing company and we are in the process of
developing a new shop floor application using .Net 3.0 framework and Smart
Client.

On the shop floor, I would like to be able to use barcodes for
authentication, is it possible? If so, how?

The environment is Active Directory and the hardware on the shop floor will
be touch screens and barcode scanners. Instead of a user having to use the
touch screen for login, I would like to have a special barcode printed for
the back of their security badge for this purpose. Anyone ever done this or
know how to does this in .Net?

--
Thanks,
Wade

AD has no native support for doing this. How you might approach this
depends on what level of integration with the OS you require. If you just
need authentication at the application level, then you could validate the
barcodes in your own code and go from there. You might also consider using
protocol transition to generate a WindowsIdentity for the user if you need
OS level support for a Windows token for the user.

If you need this baked into the OS deeply, you would have to do a lot of
work (write an SSP and login UI/GINA?).

Joe K.

--
Joe Kaplan-MS MVP Directory Services Programming
Co-author of "The .NET Developer's Guide to Directory Services Programming"
http://www.directoryprogramming.net
--
"Wade" <Wade (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

Hello,

Will the barcode scanners be connected as 'keyboard wedge' devices?
If so, output from the scanner will appear on screen exactly as though
it had been typed into the keyboard. If the existing process requires
that the user enter their ID and password, the same thing should be do-
able with a barcode and scanner without any software changes.

The fly in this ointment is that a barcode is simply a means of
encoding information in a printed form. If there is a password
embedded in the barcode, it would be readable to anyone with a barcode
scanner (or it could be easily duplicated on a copier).

Best Regards,

Bob

Bob Lounsbury
The Barcode Software Center
www.makebarcode.com


On Sep 27, 10:46 pm, Wade <W... (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote:

Well I could get around the user id and password issue by encrypting it will
a special key that is only assessible via our web services server and the
user id and password on the screen would use the password substitution
characters. The main issue is we have a AD policy that requires a new
password every x days. I do not want to create a bunch of work for someone
to have to regenerate a barcode every x days for every shopfloor worker.


--
Thanks,
Wade


"Bob" wrote: