I would like to enable users of my existing web app to login to Joomla with the credentials already stored in my web app's database.

By using the Joomla 1.5 authentication plugin system -- http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Creating_an_Authentication_Plugin_for_Joomla_1.5 -- I would like to bypass the Joomla registration process and bypass creating users in the Joomla database altogether.

My thought had been that I could simply populate a User object, which would be stored in the Session, and that this would replace the need to store a user in the Joomla database.

After looking through the code surrounding user management in Joomla, it seems like any time you interact with the User object, the database is being queried.

It therefore seems like my initial idea won't work.

Is that right?

It looks like, in order to achieve the effect I want, I will have to actually register a user from within the authentication plugin at the time they first login.

This is not ideal, so before I go forward with it, I wanted to check with Joomla developers whether it is possible to do what I described above.

Thanks in advance -- I am new to Joomla and greatly appreciate your help!