Patent ID: 8055775

Claim:
A method for providing a policy engine framework, comprising: mediating a consumer policy request for a web service through at least one of a functional web service and a policy web service; making a single unified method call to each of a plurality of policy adapters in response to the mediated customer request, each of the plurality of policy adapters in communication with one each of a plurality of different policy servers; each of the called policy adapters performing a run-time key look-up via an enterprise service bus mediator of policy reference keys stored in a lightweight data access protocol server repository for an approved policy generated at design time for an associated policy server, transforming the single unified method call into a format acceptable by the approved policy of the associated policy server, and placing the transformed request to the associated policy server; any at least one of the called policy adapters formatting a result back from an associated one of the associated policy servers; selecting a complex flow-based policy from a policy registry repository as a function of the formatted result; completing the selected complex flow-based policy by defining a workflow and a business rule that the enterprise service bus mediator may use during a service call as a function of data in the policy registry repository; and returning the completed selected complex flow-based policy to a requesting consumer.