Changes to client registration and access token generation on the SAS Viya platform -- Please Read!

[joeFurbee]

I wanted to bring to your attention a couple of changes for SAS Viya 2023.1 concerning the use of the Consul token in client registration and the scopes and authorities attributes. I've updated my blog post Authentication to SAS Viya: a couple of approaches, which provides more details and examples. I've also updated the Python notebook script that registers a client and generates an access token.

This is a welcome change, as SAS admins no longer need SAS Viya server access to register a client.

Consul Token

The use of the SAS Configuration Server (Consul) token is no longer required to generate an access token for use in client (application) registration. Rather, a user in the SASAdministrators group can generate the token. See the blog post reference above for detailed commands.

Scopes and Authorities

The changes for scopes and authorities attributes in client registration now closely align with OpenID Connect standards.

Scopes

The list of scopes allows for the client to obtain on behalf of users, when using any grant type other than “client_credentials”. For most SAS Viya APIs, “openid” and “uaa.user” are sufficient. Previously, SAS user groups were listed under scopes. Now, user groups are handled under the authorities parameter. Please note however, that the SASAdministrators group is still handled under scopes. This was done so that a user must opt-in to SASAdministrators when getting an authorization code.

For client applications that only use the grant type “client_credentials” and therefore do not act on behalf of users, use the default scope “uaa.none”.

Grant Type	Recommended Values
authorization_code	openid, uaa.user, (SASAdministrators in some cases)
password	openid, uaa.user, (SASAdministrators in some cases)
client_credentials	uaa.none

Authorities

For use with "client credentials" grant type.  Authorities specify the SAS groups the tokens inherit. For “authorization_code” and “password” grants, all SAS user groups are assumed and included. You do not pass the authorities attribute when using authorization_code or password grant types.

Grant Type	Recommended Values
client_credentials	Explicit SAS user groups

Questions?

If you have further questions, please put them in the Comments section and we'll get back to you.