XACML's Policy Decision Point
XACML is the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language as defined by OASIS.
XACML defines three parts:
- an architecture
- a request/response scheme, and
- an architecture. The PDP is part of the architecture
In XACML the Policy Decision Point (PDP) is the core engine used to evaluate incoming authorization requests against known policies in order to decide whether a request will result in a Deny or Permit, e.g.:
Is Physician John allowed to access the Medical Record of Patient James at 3 pm?
The PDP will produce a decision e.g.
Permit + obligation "log the decision"
See XACML's tag (xacml) for more details.