Robert Steele

A Design Methodology for User Access Control (UAC) Middleware

Robert Steele, William Gardner, Rajugan R., Tharam S. Dillon
University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract

XML, a self-describing and semi-structured data format, is becoming a standard to represent information and exchange data between applications across the Web. XML repositories are also starting to be used either to store data or as an interoperability layer for legacy applications and data sources. The widespread use of XML highlights the need for flexible and expressive access control models for XML documents to protect sensitive and valuable information from unauthorised access. Metadata for advanced context representation is likely to play an increasingly important role within access control models and languages for active Web data. Importantly access control for both human users and machine users must be supported. This paper presents an XML Views-based access control model, which supports access control for both human and machine data users. The design methodology we propose is based on XML views [1, 2] and support conceptual level design of UAC constraints.