Patent ID: 7461395

Claim:
A method of managing authorizations in a Java programming environment, the method comprising: defining a set of first roles for grouping subjects having similar needs to access objects in the Java programming environment, wherein the objects comprise computing resources, wherein each subject holds a custom combination of second roles created by a user, wherein membership of the second roles is not inherited from each other; and wherein the second roles are associated with one or more privileges; for each of said first roles, granting one or more privileges to access one or more of the objects by granting each of said roles an object permission for the one or more objects; assigning each subject authorized to access the Java programming environment to one or more of said first roles, thereby enabling implementation of role-based access control; assigning a subset of said set of first roles and a subset of said subjects to a realm, wherein the realm specifies a separate namespace; and when a first subject is authenticated in the Java programming environment, constructing a first access control context comprising: identities of a first subset of said first roles to which the first subject is assigned; and identities of a second subset of said first roles indirectly assigned to the first subject by virtue of the first subject's assignment to a role in said first subset of said first roles.