AN APPROACH TO ROLE BASED MANAGEMENT FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Department of ComputingImperial College180 Queen’s GateLondon SW7 2BZEmail: e.c.lupu@doc.ic.ac.uk, m.sloman@doc.ic.ac.ukAbstractRoles have been widely used for modelling the authority, responsibility, functions andinteractions associated with manager positions within organisations. In this paper we discussthe issues related to specifying roles for both human and automated managers of distributedcomputer systems. The starting point is that a role can be defined in terms of theauthorisation and obligation policies for a particular manager position which specify whatactions the manager is permitted or is obliged to do on a set of target objects. This permitsinidviduals to be assigned or removed from postions without respecifying the policies for therole. However these policies are insufficient for specifying the interaction protocols betweenmanagers and the targets they manage or between different manager roles. There is a needto specify the coordination and synchronisation relating to manager interactions.This report describes notations and techniques applicable to specifying the interactions andactivities related to manager roles in a distributed system and indicates which are the mostsuitable for implementation within a role based management framework. Structuring amanagement framework in terms of roles enables a more flexible and dynamic approach tothe management of a complex system.This study assumes the existence of an underlying monitoring service and of a specificationlanguage for management policies. The role based framework is composed of a set of toolsenabling the creation of roles from policies, the specification of the relationships betweenroles and of protocols for role interaction. In addition, the issues related to conflicts whichcan occur between policies within a role or between interacting roles are briefly discussed.Keywords: distributed systems management, management roles, role interactions,management policy, obligation, authorisation, policy conflicts.

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