Data Stores and Persistence

Duende IdentityServer is backed by two kinds of data:

• Configuration Data: clients, resources and identity providers.
• Operational Data: tokens, authorization codes, grants and sessions.

Data access is abstracted by store interfaces registered in the ASP.NET Core service provider. These interfaces allow IdentityServer to access the data it needs at runtime when processing requests. You can implement these interfaces yourself to use any database, or choose one of the built-in providers.

Note

Store interfaces abstract where data is stored. IdentityServer’s protocol engine consumes these interfaces at runtime but has no built-in knowledge of the underlying database or persistence mechanism and does not include a general-purpose administration tool.

The Duende Storage provider includes configuration administration APIs that you can use to build a management experience on top of the store abstraction.

Third-party options, both commercial and free and open source software (FOSS), provide administrative UIs for the Entity Framework Core implementations. See Admin UI for details.

Configuration DataClients, resources and identity providers: the static configuration that defines what your IdentityServer supports.

Operational DataTokens, authorization codes, grants and sessions: the runtime data IdentityServer generates during authentication flows.

Storage ProvidersChoose how and where your data is stored: Duende Storage, Entity Framework Core, in-memory or a custom implementation.