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Publishing a XACML Policy

Before you begin

Before publishing a XACML policy to the Policy Decision Point (PDP), you need to create the policy first. For more information on how to create a XACML policy, see Creating a XACML Policy.

In order to use a XACML policy for authorization in WSO2 Identity Server, you need to publish it to the Policy Decision Point (PDP) where the authorization decision is made. The policy will not be enforced unless it is published.

At the point of publishing the policy, the policy in the Policy Administration Point(PAP) policy store will sync up with PDP policy store. The PDP will access one or more policies in the Policy Administration Point(PAP), and other additional information such as subject, resource, action and environmental resources in the Policy Information Point(PIP) to make the decision. For more information about this process, see XACML system architecture.

You can publish a XACML policy to PDP for runtime evaluation using the instructions in this topic.

  1. Sign in. Enter your username and password to log on to the Management Console.
  2. Navigate to the Main menu to access the Entitlement menu. Click Policy Administration under PAP.
  3. The policies that you created are listed in the Available Entitlement Policies table.

  4. You can publish policies using one of the following options.

    1. Click Publish to My PDP next to the policy you wish to publish - This will publish the specific policy to PDP.
    2. Select the specific policies you wish to publish using the checkboxes available and click Publish - This will allow us to publish multiple policies at the same time to the PDP.
    3. Click Publish All to publish all the available policies - This will publish all the policies available in the "Available Entitlement Policy" to the PDP.
    4. The Publish Policy page appears.

  5. Here you can do the following by selecting an option from each section.

    a. Select policy publishing action

    Action Discription
    Add Policy The target action of the policy is "CREATE". This option works only for the initial policy publishing process. The policy is published to the PDP and can be viewed by navigating to PDP>Policy View.
    Update Policy The target action of the policy is "UPDATE". This option updates an existing policy that has already been published to the PDP. The existing policy listed in the Policy View will be updated.
    Order Policy

    The target action of the policy is "ORDER". This option is used to put the existing published policies in order. The policies will be ordered in descending order in the Policy View .

    This is not relevant for the initial policy publishing process.
    Enable Policy

    The target action of the policy is "ENABLE". This option enables the policy in the PDP.

    This is not relevant for the initial policy publishing process.
    Disable Policy

    The target action of the policy is "DISABLE". This option disables the policy in the PDP.


    This is not relevant for the initial policy publishing process.
    Delete Policy The target action of the policy is "DELETE". This option deletes an existing published policy in the PDP. The relevant policy will be removed from the Policy View in the PDP.

    b. Select policy Enable/Disable

    • Publish As Enabled Policy - Allows you to enable the policy to be published. This is available by default when publishing to PDP.

    • Publish As Disabled Policy - Allows you to disable the policy to be published.

    c. Select policy order

    • Use default policy order - Sets the default order of a policy as 0.

    • Define policy order - Allows you to set a policy order according to your preference.

  6. Click Publish.

  7. Once you publish, you can see published policies in the Policy View in the Entitlement menu under PDP.
  8. By clicking "Edit Order"(2), you can edit the order of the policy and the order will be displayed in the policy view(1).

When you have multiple policies published, you can select a policy combining algorithm from(3) and click Update.

When you have multiple ordered policies, the least order will evaluate first and the policies will evaluate in the ascending order of the order number(priority). When the priority is high, the order number is low.

Click to view information about policy combining algorithms

There are Policy Combining Algorithms which are used by Policy Sets and Rule Combining Algorithms which are used by Policies. Each of the algorithms mentioned below has its Policy Combining algorithm and its Rule Combining algorithms as follows:

  • Standard combining algorithms defined in XACML 3.0:
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:deny-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:deny-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:permit-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:permit-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:first-applicable
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:first-applicable
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:only-one-applicable
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:ordered-deny-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:ordered-deny-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:ordered-permit-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:ordered-permit-overrides
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:deny-unless-permit
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:rule-combining-algorithm:permit-unless-deny
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:deny-unless-permit
    • urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:3.0:policy-combining-algorithm:permit-unless-deny

These algorithms are explained in detail as follows,

  • Deny Overrides:
    This combining algorithm combines decisions in such a way that if any decision is a Deny, then that decision wins.
    Deny overrides is one of the safest combining algorithms since it favors a Deny decision. However, if none of the children return a Deny decision, then the combining algorithm will never produce a Deny.

  • Permit Overrides:
    This combining algorithm combines decisions in such a way that if any decision is a Permit, then that decision wins.

The permit overrides combining algorithm can be interesting when:

At least one child must return a Permit for access to be granted overall regardless of restrictions.

One wants to return all the reasons why access is being denied. This is what one could call a “greedy deny overrides”.Forinstanceifthe reason for not being able to view a resource is that(a) you are not the owner and (b) you are in the wrong department, then we could rework the previous example as follows. When any of the deny reason triggers, the response would be denied with all the applicable reasons for access being denied:

  • Policy Set (deny overrides): role==manager AND action==view AND resourceType==resource
  • Policy 1 (permit overrides)
    • Rule 1: deny if resourceOwner != userId + Advice(“you are not the owner of the resource”)
    • Rule 2: deny if rsourceDepartment != userDepartment+ Advice(“you are not in the same department as the resource)

  • Policy 2

    • Rule 1: permit

  • First Applicable:
    This combining algorithm combines decisions in such a way that the final decision returned is the first one produced either of Permit or Deny.

    First applicable is useful to shortcut policy evaluation. For instance, if a policy set contains a long series of not applicable policies and one applicable policy which returns either of Permit or Deny, then if that policy comes first and does produce Permit or Deny, the PDP will stop there and not process the other siblings.

  • Deny Unless Permit | Permit Unless Deny:

    In XACML there are 4 possible decisions: Permit, Deny, NotApplicable, and Indeterminate. Sometimes, it is desirable to hide the NotApplicable and Indeterminate decisions to only allow for Permit or Deny. It makes the PEP logic potentially simpler.

  • Only One Applicable:

    This combining algorithm exists only for policy sets to combine policy sets and policies. It cannot be used to combine rules. With this combining algorithm, in order for either of a Permit or Deny to be returned, then only one of the children must produce a valid decision – whether Deny or Permit.

  • Ordered Deny Overrides | Ordered Permit Overrides:
    The ordered combining algorithms combine decisions in the same way as their (unordered) cousins. In, addition they bring the guarantee that policies, policy sets, and rules are considered in the order in which they are defined. The need to define an ordered combining algorithm stems from the fact the XACML specification does not specify whether order matters in the deny-overrides and permit-overrides combining algorithms.

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