Systems and methods for configuring and evaluating policies that direct
processing of one or more data streams are described. A configuration interface is described for allowing users to specify object oriented policies. These object oriented policies may allow any data structures to be applied with respect to a
payload of a received packet
stream, including any portions of HTTP traffic. A configuration interface may also allow the user to control the order in which policies and policy groups are executed, in addition to specifying actions to be taken if one or more policies are undefined. Systems and methods for
processing the policies may allow efficient
processing of object-oriented policies by applying potentially
complex data structures to
unstructured data streams. A device may also interpret and process a number of flow control commands and policy group invocation statements to determine an order of execution among a number of policies and policy groups. These policy configurations and processing may allow configuration and processing of
complex network behaviors relating to load balancing, VPNs, SSL offloading, content switching,
application security, acceleration, and caching.