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Subject: Combining algorithms


All,

We still have the combining algorithms issue to consider. I have written 
some text to consider and tried to organize the decisions we need to make.

First, do we want to fix the current deny/permit policy algorithms at 
all? I think we should since it is not good that the basic algorithms 
are biased. It can lead to strange effects in policies, like a policy 
can return Deny although there is no rule with Effect="Deny" in it.

Assuming that we do want to fix the basic combining algorithms so that 
they are not biased,  then there are two orthogonal decisions for us to 
make:

1. Do we want to define biased algorithms as well, or do we rely on the 
PEP bias alone?

2. Do we want to make use of an extended Indeterminate to allow more 
fine grained treatment of errors in the combining algorithms?

See the attached documents for what the different algorithms look like.

comb-algs.doc contains combining algorithms which makes the basic 
algorithms unbiased and introduces separate biased algorithms. The word 
diff is against the current 3.0 working draft 7.

comb-algs-extended.doc shows algorithms which make use of an extended 
indeterminate. The diff is against the unbiased algorithms in 
comb-algs.doc. I have not "ported" the other algorithms to the extended 
Indeterminate yet or written biased variants. Also note that under the 
extended indeterminate the rule and policy combining algorithms become 
the same, so I joined up their descriptions.

My preference is that

- The basic combining algorithms are made unbiased. (I feel strongly 
about this, the rest I care less about.)

- We do not introduce biased alternatives. (I am happy with the PEP bias.)

- We do not introduce an extended indeterminate. (I think it complicates 
matters for fairly little value.)

Best regards,
Erik

comb-algs-extended.doc

comb-algs.doc



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