I'm trying to connect to an external SQL server DB programmatically from a SharePoint WebPart. The problem is that I'm not able to authenticate to the DB although I gave access to application pool identity on it.
After investigation, I knew that the reason is that we are using Windows Authentication with NTLM, which doesn't have the ability to pass the credentials to the external DB. I also knew that kerberos can be a solution. But, other than kerberos, do we have any other options?
I've heard about something called SharePoint Secure Stores where I can declare a specific target data source and SharePoint can handle the authentication to it. But I'm not sure if this solution fits my problem