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Summary: 1
On Access Control, Data Integration,
and Their Languages
Martín Abadi
This paper considers the goals and features of recent languages for access
control in distributed systems. In particular, it relates those languages to data
integration.
Languages for access control
Access control is central to security, and in computer systems it appears in many
guises and in many places. Applications, virtual machines, operating systems,
and firewalls often have their own access-control machinery, with their own
idiosyncrasies, bugs, and loopholes. Physical protection, at the level of doors or
wires, is another form of access control.
Over the years, there have been many small and large efforts to unify models
and mechanisms for access control. Beyond any tiny intellectual pleasure that
such unifications might induce, these may conceivably contribute to actual secu-
rity. For example, when there is a good match between the permissions in
applications and those in the underlying platforms, access control mechanisms
may have clearer designs, simpler implementations, and easier configurations.
The benefits are however far from automatic the result is sometimes more
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