You can set the derby.authentication.provider property to the full name of a class that implements the public interface org.apache.derby.authentication.UserAuthenticator.
By writing your own class that fulfills some minimal requirements, you can hook Derby up to an external authentication service other than LDAP. To do so, specify an external authentication service by setting the property derby.authentication.provider to a class name that you want Derby to load at startup.
The class that provides the external authentication service must implement the public interface org.apache.derby.authentication.UserAuthenticator and throw exceptions of the type java.sql.SQLException where appropriate.
Using a user-defined class makes Derby adaptable to various naming and directory services.