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4.2.4 Refinement Process

Insofar as policy refinement is concerned, only brief mention was made in [MoSl 93b,Wies 95,Koch 97,Heil 98]. Refinement of policies is usually necessary, because they are used to achieve a management objective, which is almost always formulated on an abstract level.

The refinement process is the most critical process in the application of policies for management, because it must be ensured that the semantics of the high-level policy is not changed. The initial high-level policy describing the principle is already formulated by the delegation process.

In the refinement process, the policy has to become more concrete through splitting it into several lower-level policies, which affect the same domain of subjects and targets. Alternatively it can be split into several lower level policies which partition these domains. Besides having different enforcement contexts (e.g., affecting other domains), these policies define (sub-)goals of their own. Together, they attempt to fulfil the high-level objective.

The following outlines some points to show the complexity of the refinement process:

As mentioned above, the refinement process creates new policy descriptions, or policy objects. Despite of this, it also uses existing policies for further refinement or for taking decisions during the refinement phase. This is depicted in figure [*].


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Next: 4.2.5 Distribution Process Up: 4.2 Policy Supporting Processes Previous: 4.2.3 Delegation Process   Contents
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