Patent ID: 7774826

Claim:
A method for determining effective policy profiles in a client-server architecture, comprising: receiving a request for an effective policy profile at a server, wherein the server receives the request for the effective policy profile from a client device communicatively coupled to the server via a network; retrieving the effective policy profile for the client device at the server, wherein retrieving the effective policy profile for the client device includes: determining whether the effective policy profile for the client device is stored in a local cache locally coupled to the server, wherein the local cache stores one or more policy profiles having timeout values that are less than or equal to a predetermined time interval; retrieving the effective policy profile for the client device from the local cache in response to determining that the policy profiles stored in the local cache include the effective policy profile for the client device; returning, from the server to the client device, the effective policy profile retrieved from the local cache in response to determining that the policy profiles stored in the local cache include the effective policy profile for the client device; retrieving a plurality of policy profiles that are effective for the client device from a policy data store that includes a repository integrated with the server in response to determining that the policy profiles stored in the local cache do not include the effective policy profile for the client device; returning, from the server to the client device, one of the plurality of effective policy profiles retrieved from the policy data store having a hierarchical distance closest to the client device in response to determining that the policy profiles stored in the local cache do not include the effective policy profile for the client device, wherein the hierarchical distances from the plurality of effective policy profiles to the client device depend on a distance within a hierarchy from the plurality of effective policy profiles to a root of the policy data store.