RDF metadata for XML access control

Abstract

In this paper we present an access control framework that provides flexible security granularity for XML documents. RDF statements are used to represent security objects and to express security policy. The concepts of simple security object and association security object are defined. Our model allows to express and enforce access control on XML trees and their associations. Access control rules, corresponding to (s, o, ±a) triples, are represented as RDF statements with properties access type, user, and object. A history file is maintained for each user that allows decision-making using temporal data.