Authorization

Abstract

Like many aspects of APEX, authorization schemes have been set up to be simple, declarative artifacts. A single APEX authorization scheme is much like a building brick. The act of laying a single brick, or even several bricks to make a simple structure like a raised garden flowerbed, is simple and easy to do; the design effort is trivial. Now the same simple construction element, the brick, can also be used as the fundamental building block for extremely large and complex structures like the Dome of Florence Cathedral in Italy, which is the largest brick dome in the world. Designing the cathedral was most definitely not a trivial effort. Like the cathedral, a large APEX cloud or enterprise computer system will need a major design effort before beginning to construct the system’s complex interplay of permissions that relate people, roles, and responsibilities. Now let’s discuss some of the design issues that are related to APEX authorization schemes.