Pragmatic XML access control using off-the-shelf RDBMS

As the XML model gets more popular, new needs arise to specify access control within XML model. Various XML access control models and enforcement methods have been proposed recently. However, by and large, these approaches either assume the support of security features from XML databases or use proprietary tools outside of databases. Since there are currently few commercial XML databases with such capabilities, the proposed approaches are not yet practical. Therefore, we explore the problem of "Is is possible to fully support XML access control in RDBMS?" We formalize XML and relational access control models using deep set operators. Then we show that the problem of XML AC atop RDBMS is amount to the problem of converting XML deep set operators into equivalent relational deep set operators. We show the conversion algebra and identify the properties to ensure the correct conversion. Finally, we present three practical implementations of XML access controls using off-the-shelf RDBMS and their performance results.