URBS Enforcement Mechanisms for Object-Oriented Systems

Our past efforts have investigated user-role based security (URBS) for discretionary ac- cess control to provide customizable access to the public interface of object types/classes, allowing different individuals specialized access at different times based on their needs and responsibilities within the application. This is supported by the ADAM environment (Active Design and Analyses Modeling) which automatically generates code (C++, Ada83, Ada95) from language-independent object-oriented designs that have been supplied via text and form-based input. ADAM provides a means to define and analyze user-role based security and authorization, but does not provide an automatic transition from these definitions to “code” that realizes the required security. The work presented in this paper details three approaches for enforcement mechanisms for object-oriented systems, and evaluates them in the context of a set of goals. We believe that the approaches and results presented herein are relevant to object-oriented systems.