2013/08/02 by James Cheney, Cheney, James
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Access Control and Trust #Cryptography and Data Security #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #Databases (cs.DB) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO) #Security and Verification in Computing
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1308.0502
openalex publication_date 2013/08/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider the problem of extending XML databases with fine-grained, high-level access control policies specified using XPath expressions. Most prior work checks individual updates dynamically, which is expensive (requiring worst-case execution time proportional to the size of the database). On the other hand, static enforcement can be performed without accessing the database but may be incomplete, in the sense that it may forbid accesses that dynamic enforcement would allow. We introduce topological characterizations of XPath fragments in order to study the problem of determining when an access control policy can be enforced statically without loss of precision. We introduce the notion of fair policies that are statically enforceable, and study the complexity of determining fairness and of static enforcement itself.