Validation of conditional policy attachments

Abstract

Framework for conditionally attaching web service policies to a policy subject (e.g., a web service client or service endpoint) at subject runtime. In one set of embodiments, a validation process can be performed at a policy subject during an initialization phase to ensure that there are no validation errors with respect to the web service policies that may be conditionally attached to the subject. This validation process can include grouping the policies that have been associated with the policy subject (via policy attachment metadata) by their corresponding constraint expressions, and determining which groups can potentially overlap (i.e., be simultaneously attached to the policy subject) at runtime. Each set of overlapping groups can then be validated using a predefined set of validation rules to identify potential errors pertaining to the policies in the set.