Approach to object security in Distributed SOM

We briefly review the IBM System Object Model (SOM, incorporated in SOMobjects™) and Distributed SOM (DSOM). We then describe the base DSOM security architecture characterized by the presence of the Object Security Service (OSS) framework in the DSOM run-time environment. Depending on its implementation, this framework can be wrapped around procedural security service providers, thus taking advantage of existing security mechanisms. Subsequently we elaborate on the OSS elements for authentication and authorization and how they relate to the DSOM Object Request Broker (ORB™) on the one hand, and to the client and server applications on the other hand. We discuss the DSOM approach to object access control and present a novel method for enforcing it.