Policy conflict detection using Alloy: an explorative study

Policy conflicts are inevitable in policy-based systems. Handling conflicts is considered to be so vital in policy-based system, that several policy languages introduced built-in functions to handle them. In this thesis, we investigate an innovative approach for policy conflict detection. We investigate inclusion of MDE (Model Driven Engineering) concept in the policy conflict detection method. We inspect the practicality of analysing policies along with policy language’s meta-model in order to detect conflicts. We will examine feasibility of policy conflict detection using Alloy and PML (Policy Modelling Language). In our work, we systematically explore ways of modelling policies in Alloy. We have successfully introduced proper modelling approach for policy conflict detection and analysis of the policies according to PML meta-model. However, we have also shown that a one-pass analysis of detecting conflicts in addition to analysing policies according to the PML meta-model is not achievable.