Automatically logging into LV DSC

[SachaE]

Has anyone got either the header file for the LVSEC.dll or a sample .vi on how to automatically login to the DSC Engine, i.e. without bringing up the login prompt? I'd have thought this would be straight forward enough with the login function in the lvsec.dll, I just can't guess at the prototype.
Thanks
Sacha Emery

[Khalid]

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Why don't / can't you use the Programmatic Login VIs?

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[SachaE]

Want to use a 4 digit "pin" code to allow access to user interface. It's going to work on a keyboardless system, instead using a touchscreen with a .vi set up for a keypad. Typing in a username and password at the same time is very time consuming. To implement this would require the username to be the same as the password, as (for obvious reasons) you can't interrogate the username / password list to find the matches (would make security a mute point). So to come up with a separate user manager to implement this requires direct access to the .dll functionality to perform the actual login sensibly.
Make sense?

Thanks

S.
S.

[SachaE]

Hi Khalid,
I was approaching the problem from the wrong angle. I've implemented the solution quite easily in the end - since I can get a list of all the users, I can use a trial and error method in a while loop, watching the error code from the login.vi for user doesn't exist, and wrong password, until it has successfully logged in a user with the pin, or it has failed on all accounts. The only drawback is the fact that you can't check when creating the users that the password is unique. (Using the method I've used, the first match of password is successful, so a separate list will have to be kept of passwords so they don't get re-used). Is there a programatic way of creating users in DSC - that way I could make my own user manager tool (like you
can with TestStand) and control the passwords that way?

Thanks
S.

[Khalid]

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Hi SachaE,

You can't create User accounts programmatically.

Since you want the users to login only by using 4-digit pin, you can use this 4-digit pin as both the Username and the Password internally to log them programmatically. This way, you don't have to search the passwords, etc. You assume the PIN is correct and pass it to the loging VI as both username and password. If the login fails, you ask them to try again.

Hope this helps.

Khalid 🙂

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[SachaE]

Thanks Khalid,
the only problem with that is a separate list would still be required to find out who the 4 digit pin belongs to when looking at the alarms, and acknowledging them.

Maybe allowing user account management external to DSC (the same as TestStand) could be a feature for the next revision.

Thanks
S.

[Philip McDermott]

A seperate list wouldn't work either as you cannot replace the users name inside DSC. The user name you logged in with is the one that shows up in the events table.If you use the khalids previous suggestion and logged in as 1234 then this user name will be displayed for all to see. Sort of making sercurity pointless as every time you acknoledge an alarm you show everybody your password.

Any more ideas

Phil McD

[Khalid]

Good catch! I overlooked this issue of Username showing up in Alarms.

In this case I guess we go back to Sacha's original idea: we maintain a separate list of Usernames and Passwords but in addition to the PIN #s. And when the user "punches in" his PIN, we do a look-up of the Username and Password for this PIN. This look-up is more efficient in that we don't have to worry about non-unique passwords. However the Usernames have to be unique, obviously.


PIN | Username | Password
------------------------------------------------------
1234 | John | Doe
4321 | Bill | Smith


So, when John logs in using his PIN, we see hi
m as the User in the Alarms, etc. May be this works??

Rgds,

Khalid

[SachaE]

Hi guys,
Just a thought, but we're having to keep two lists going then - a self secured list that "we" own, and the DSC user list.
I guess we've just hit that brick wall. We're going to have to re-invent the wheel here unless we can get the capability to create our own user manager from the DLL (so we can add users across a network - say 3 machines running in client - server - backup modes) - otherwise we're going to have to come up with our own security logins so that we can get controls and events access and then we're going to need to handle the events ourselves - the list goes on.
Is NI working on bringing DSC more into line with other SCADA packages (Lookout has some nice capabilities I'd like
to see in the next version of DSC) or can we please get the information on using the DLL directly?
When is NI bringing out the next version of DSC?
What new features are being looked at? (Can we have a configurable user manager please!!)

Thanks
S.