A Logical Formalization of a Secure XML Database

TL;DR

This paper presents a formal logical framework for modeling secure XML databases, incorporating XPath and XUpdate, with security policies and axioms for access control and updates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel logical theory that integrates security policies with XML database operations, enabling formal reasoning about access control and modifications.

Findings

Formal logical model for secure XML databases

Axioms for deriving user-specific views and updates

Framework supports reasoning about security policies

Abstract

In this paper, we first define a logical theory representing an XML database supporting XPath as query language and XUpdate as modification language. We then extend our theory with predicates allowing us to specify the security policy protecting the database. The security policy includes rules addressing the read and write privileges. We propose axioms to derive the database view each user is permitted to see. We also propose axioms to derive the new database content after an update.