In this chapter, we saw authentication mechanisms commonly used in the enterprises, namely SAML, LDAP, and OAuth/OIDC, supported by Spring Security through hands-on coding examples. We used the sample application built as part of Chapter 2, Deep Diving into Spring Security, as a basis for explaining the functionality and implementation of other authentication mechanisms.

However, we intentionally didn't reactive programming in our coding examples. This chapter was aimed at making you understand the core concepts of each of the authentication mechanisms, by making use of the familiar Spring Web MVC application framework. We will cover reactive programming in more detail in Chapter 5, Integrating with Spring WebFlux.