Patent ID: 7266605

Claim:
A method for providing an authentication and authorization pipeline in a server providing access to userID-roles data and resource-roles data, the userID-roles data including one or more data entries for at least one user who has access to at least one resource accessible from the server and the resource-roles data including one or more data entries for at least one resource accessible from the server, the pipeline being configured to use the userID-roles data and the resource-roles data to grant user access to resources accessible from the server, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of resource access requests for a server resource; using a userID and one or more authentication parameters to authenticate an identity of a user attempting to access the server resource; for each resource access request, creating a distinct data object having an authenticated userID and one or more access roles corresponding to the authenticated userID obtained from the userID-roles data; and authorizing access to a resource identified within a resource access request if one or more access roles associated with the data object correspond to a resource role listed within the resource-roles data for the identified resource; and wherein, in pipeline fashion, the data object is passed from an operation authenticating the identity of the user and the data object is received by an operation authorizing access to the resource.