Using usage control to access XML databases

Abstract

XML documents usually contain private information that cannot be shared by every user communities. It is widely used in web environment. XML database is becoming increasingly important since it consists of XML documents. Several applications for supporting selective access to data are available over the web. Usage control has been considered as the next generation access control model with distinguishing properties of decision continuity. It has been proven efficient to improve security administration with flexible authorization management. Object-oriented database systems represent complex data structure and XML databases may be stored in the objects-oriented database system. Therefore authorization models for XML databases could be used the same the models as object-oriented databases. In this paper, we propose usage control models to access XML databases and compare with an authorization model designed for object-oriented databases. We have analyzed the characteristics of various access authorizations and presented detailed models for different kinds of authorizations. Finally, comparisons with related works are analyzed.