Enforcing context model based service-oriented architecture policies and policy engine

A policy engine for enforcing context model based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) policies, comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• a processor programmed to execute:
• a gathering module that gathers instance documents related to policy enforcement according to a business requirement, where the instance documents are instantiated from corresponding schema documents;
• a context model generator that generates an instantiated context model comprising references to the gathered instance documents from a context model definition;
• a policy set generator that generates a policy set to be enforced via the instantiated context model according to the gathered instance documents;
• a sequence determining module that determines an enforcement sequence of policies in the policy set;
• a policy applying module that applies the policies to the instantiated context model according to the enforcement sequence;
• and
• where the policy applying module and the context model generator are further configured to provide context model-based forward chaining, comprising being configured to:
• determine whether the instantiated context model should be updated;
• if the instantiated context model should be updated:
• update the instantiated context model with at least one updated instance document comprising executing an updating operation to create the at least one updated instance document;
• detect and resolving a conflict caused by the updating operation;
• generate the updated instantiated context model according to the at least one updated instance document and the instantiated context model;
• and
• re-apply the policies to only the at least one updated instance document within the updated instantiated context model according to the enforcement sequence.