All user authentication operations follow a common process and depend on a registry of enabled domains (domain registry) that has either been created in an ABL session or for each database connection. For more information on domains and domain registries, see Run-time domain configuration.

The following procedure applies to any OpenEdge-performed user authentication and many implementations of an application-performed user authentication. However, the form of user credentials required for an application-performed user authentication can be different from what is used to initialize the security token, requiring a different order to these steps. For more information, see Application-performed user authentication.