Introduction to WMM

Portal server uses WebSphere Member manager (WMM) for its user and group management through an abstract layer called Portal User Management Architecture (PUMA).WMM supports four types of members Person, Group, Organization Unit and organization. Each member has profile that describes its characteristics within the system. The Portal server access control mechanism understands only two types Person and Group

WMM provides these functionality

• A Common mechanism to access member profiles that are made of attributes regardless of where and how the data of member profile is stored.


• A set of services to manage profiles such as create, read, update, remove and search members in profile repository.


• Group Management: Assigning members to group or removing members from group and querying group membership.


• A database profile repository adapter to interact with a database profile repository. The database should follow the schema defined by WMM. The database adapter is referred to as wmmDB


• LDAP profile adapter to interact with LDAP servers. The LDAP adapter is referred to as wmmLDAP. The wmmLDAP is abstraction layer and there is a adapter module for each type of supported LDAP.

Optionally you can use a look-aside profile registry adapter to interact with a look-aside repository which is database confirming to schema defined by WMM. The look aside repository is used for storing user attributes that cannot be stored in LDAP, reasons couldbe LDAP might be readOnly and you dont want to change schema of LDAP. The adaptor for lookaside is referred to as wmmLookAside. Although you can technically use wmmLookAside in conjunction with wmmDB repository it is likely unnecessary since all functionality supported by the wmmLookAside is also supported by wmmDB