Discretionary access control with the administrative role graph model

Previous research examining the mapping of discretionary access control (DAC) to role-based access control (RBAC) has considered neither ownership nor further granting of privileges. We show how to accomplish this by mapping from a relational database environment to the administrative role graph model (ARGM) of Wang and Osborn. The goals of the research are to determine if the ARGM has sufficient features to accomplish this mapping, and to study whether the grant operation in relational databases should be modeled as administration or as delegation. Our conclusion is that the ARGM can simulate both ownership and granting, without requiring a delegation model.