Re: HRAC submeeting team meeting July 30, 1998: minutes

[barkley@sdct-sunsrv1.ncsl.nist.gov (John Barkley)]

I have a couple of questions about the minutes.

1. Can the word "target" used in the list of Design Goals be replaced 
by the words "ADO Client" defined in the subsequent "Rough Model and 
Terminology in It" section with no change in meaning?

<  2. Tree-like hierarchy (acyclic directed graph [ADG]): each
<  resource is uniquely identified by an identifier which has internal
<  structure. The identifier structure represents the path to the
<  resource. This resource space is similar to Unix directory tree
<  organization, where a name of any file is a global path to that
<  file beginning from root. An authorization rule allows to make
<  decision on any node or leaf. Access to the resource is granted if
<  access is granted to every node in the path to the resource. For
<  example, in order to have access to resource identified by
<  /BHSSF/SMH/patients/JohnSmith/bloodtests/August-02/test-3 access
<  should be given to /BHSSF, to /BHSSF/SMH, to /BHSSF/SMH/patients,
<  ..., to /BHSSF/SMH/patients/JohnSmith/bloodtests/August-02/test-3.
<  The described logic is the same as in access control model of Unix
<  file system.

2. Is the proposed "tree-like hierarchy" restricted to a tree or can
it be any acyclic directed graph (ADG), i.e. can there be more than
one path to a node? For example, symbolic links provide multiple paths
to a Unix file. All trees are ADGs but not all ADGs are trees. 
Unfortunately, the term "hierarchy" is used for both things that are 
arbitrary ADGs and things restricted to trees.
   
3. The text implies that there is a single "root" for all resources.
Is this the case, or can there be a forest of "tree-like hierarchies"?

jb
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