Namespace Access Control for Multi-Tenant Content Integrity
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Solution Overview
Problem
In complex software systems, managing modelled content and ensuring differential access rights across multiple tenants in a multi-tenant environment is challenging, particularly in managed content scenarios where maintaining the integrity of modelled content and restricting editing rights is crucial.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of namespaces, where a collection of computing objects is associated with a namespace identifier, allowing for the definition and registration of access rights, enabling granular control over operations such as read, create, update, and delete, and allowing multiple tenants to have different access rights within the same namespace.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple tenants are allowed to access and modify modelled content in a multi-tenant environment, then system versatility and adaptability are improved, but content integrity and security are worsened due to increased risk of unauthorized modifications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments modelled content into distinct namespaces, each with its own access control rights. This allows different tenants to access different namespaces with different permission levels, enabling multi-tenant versatility while maintaining content integrity through isolated access control boundaries.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local access control rights for each namespace, where each namespace can have customized access policies tailored to specific tenants. This allows fine-grained control over who can read, create, update, or delete content in each namespace, balancing versatility with integrity.
2Reliability
If access control rights are implemented for each namespace, then content integrity is improved, but system complexity increases due to additional access control mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses a universal access control mechanism that applies consistently across all namespaces. The same access control framework and namespace registry structure are used throughout the system, reducing overall complexity while maintaining strong integrity controls.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a namespace registry as an intermediary component that manages access control rights. This registry acts as a central authority that stores and enforces access policies, simplifying the complexity of managing multiple access control mechanisms by consolidating them in a single manageable structure.
3Ease of operation
If namespaces are used to organize computing objects, then ease of operation is improved through better organization, but device complexity increases due to namespace registration and management overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where the namespace registry automatically manages namespace registration and access control rights without requiring manual intervention. This reduces the operational overhead of namespace management while maintaining clear organization and accessibility.
Data Source
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AI summary
Techniques and solutions are provided for organizing and controlling access/operations with respect to computing objects, such as a definition of a computing object or data associated with an instance of a defined computing object. A collection of computing objects is associated with a namespace, the namespace having a namespace identifier. At least a first set of access rights is associated with the namespace, such as access rights of a first tenant, representing a computing environment to which the computing objects of the namespace may be deployed. The access rights specify permitted/prohibited operations with respect to the computing objects, such as whether the computing objects are available on a read-only basis or whether create, update, or delete operations are also allowed. A namespace can have multiple tenant accessors, where different tenants can have different access rights for a given namespace.