DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A FLEXIBLE FUNCTION ACCESS CONTROL TOOL FOR WEB APPLICATIONS

摘要

This paper presents a flexible and practical tool, F-menugen, which supports function access control on the presentation tier by restricting user menus to functions that a user's access privileges permit. The menu structure and rules governing the functions accessible to a user are specified declaratively in an XML configuration file; the rules are based on user profiles, application-specific requirements, and certain contextual information. After user login, the tool will generate a tailored function menu according to the user's access privileges. Future changes of access control rules can also be effectively realized by modifying the configuration file without actual coding.