Stardog Launchpad

This chapter discusses Stardog Launchpad. Launchpad is an on-premise login service that gives users access to the Stardog Applications (Designer, Explorer, Studio, and Knowledge Catalog) and to the Stardog endpoints you connect it to.

Page Contents

1. Overview
2. Quick Facts
3. How it Works
4. In This Chapter

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Overview

A Launchpad deployment is a single container that sits between your users and your Stardog servers. Users sign in through an identity provider you configure, and from there reach the Stardog Applications and whichever Stardog endpoints you have connected.

Quick Facts

• Launchpad is a slimmed down version of the Stardog Cloud Portal intended to be deployed on-premise.
• Launchpad is distributed as a single Docker container, published to Docker Hub.
• Launchpad allows users to manage multiple connections to Stardog endpoints.
• Launchpad contains all Stardog Applications — Studio, Explorer, Designer, and Knowledge Catalog.
• Launchpad must be configured with an SSO provider (for example Microsoft Entra) to manage user authentication and authorization.
• Launchpad persists data to a local directory that should be mounted to a volume for persistence.
• Launchpad does not handle SSL/TLS termination by default. For a production instance, either use a reverse proxy such as Nginx or Apache, or configure Launchpad to terminate SSL/TLS connections itself.

Demo using Microsoft Entra ID to log users into Launchpad. A new connection using a Stardog username and password connection is then made.

How it Works

Launchpad involves two separate authentication steps, and it is worth keeping them apart when reading the rest of this chapter.

Logging in to Launchpad. Users authenticate to the Launchpad console itself through a configured login provider — Microsoft Entra, Okta, PingOne, Auth0, Google, Duo, or Kerberos. For testing, a shared username and password can be configured instead. See Login Providers.

Connecting to a Stardog endpoint. Once logged in, users connect to one or more Stardog endpoints. Each connection authenticates in one of two ways:

• Stardog credentials. The user enters a Stardog username and password, and Launchpad obtains a token from that Stardog server on their behalf.
• SSO connections. The user authenticates through an SSO provider, and the resulting token is presented to Stardog. This requires the Stardog endpoint to be configured to accept tokens from that provider, and a separate registration per endpoint.

Both paths rely on Stardog’s OAuth 2.0 Integration. Stardog can produce JWTs (JSON Web Tokens) that it later accepts for authenticated API requests, and can be configured to accept JWTs issued by a trusted issuer, optionally auto-creating users when roles from the identity provider map to pre-defined Stardog roles.

The login provider and the SSO connection provider do not have to be the same, and even when they are, they must be registered as separate applications in that provider.

In This Chapter

Voicebox is optional in Launchpad and runs as a second container. In Stardog Cloud the equivalent service is operated for you and is not something you configure — see Stardog Voicebox for what Voicebox does and how to use it.

Release notes for Launchpad are published in the Stardog Launchpad Release Notes.

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