Policy Driven Data Administration

This paper describes a layered architecture for a Policy Driven Data Administrator (PDDA,a system for managing data using policies. This architecture supports the policy specification and policy execution requirements of a system that can automatically manage data based on pre-specified policies. We discuss the method for defining, storing and executing the policies. The policies are defined through a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and this paper discusses the main features of our proposed GUI. The objective of such an approach is to facilitate system administration by personnel with low IT skills, by setting policies for managing the system. While defining the policies, conflicts may arise between the policies. We outline the different kinds of conflicts and the method for detecting them. We then discuss the model adapted in our implementation architecture for storing and executing these policies in the database.