A Rule-Based XML Access Control Model

Due to a widely use of XML language in various application domains, a well-established mechanism for the definition and enforcement of security controls on specific accesses to XML documents is demanded, in order to ensure that only authorized entities can perform certain actions on the protected data. The proposed rule-based, declarative approach supports definition of (possibly implicit and complex) authorization rules on particular nodes within a document as well as enforcement of multiple user-defined policies, specifying selected mechanisms to resolve conflicts or to apply default authorization. Moreover, by founded on both RDF and XDD theory, the developed approach yields a simple yet flexible and interchangeable XML access control model with well-defined declarative semantics.