J2EE Agents and a Content-Based Web Application

A content-based web application can offer pay per-view services. The application may be partitioned into two domains: the public domain that is accessible to anonymous users, and the private domain that is accessible only to the subscribers of this particular service. Furthermore, the protected domain of this application can also be subject to strict conditions based on how the user has authenticated, the time of day, IP address-based conditions and so on. Using Access Manager-based URL policies for web resources, an administrator specifies such complex policies for the application resources, which are evaluated by the agent in order to ensure that access to these resources is granted only when all conditions are satisfied. An administrator can set policies that govern access to these resources at any level of granularity, such as that for a single user or for an entire organization. For example, one such policy may govern access to certain resources in such a manner that the user must belong to a particular LDAP Group called Customer and that the time of the day be between 9:00 am and 5:00 p.m. Thus, if user Rajeev attempts to access this resource, the agent allows access only if this user is a member of the LDAP Group Customer, and if the time of day is between 9:00 am and 5:00 p.m.