Patent ID: 7478094

Claim:
In a computer network having a plurality of users of the network and comprising a database management system and a content management system controlling access to a plurality of entities shareable by said users of the network, the content management system using an access control list (ACL) table having group ACL rules and user ACL rules for controlling access to the entities, a method of resolving user privileges in the content management system to access user-selected entities, the method comprising: providing a run-time compiled ACL table by building an initial version of said run-time compiled ACL table, including rows based on the ACL table, for all users included in said ACL table, the run-time compiled ACL table including resolved privilege rules for each of said users available at run-time; using said content management system, accessing user-selected ones of said entities based on said resolved privilege rules of said run-time compiled ACL table, wherein said run-time compiled ACL table enables said content management system to resolve said user privileges without table joins by querying said run-time compiled ACL table; maintaining said user ACL rules in said run-time compiled ACL table including: selectively adding one or more user ACL rules by deleting rows from said run-time compiled ACL table based on group rules for the retrospective user, and adding rows to said run-time compiled ACL table based on the added one or more user ACL rules; selectively updating a user ACL rule by deleting rows from said run-time compiled ACL table having a respective previously added user ACL rule, and adding rows to said run-time compiled ACL table based on the updated user ACL rule; and selectively deleting a user ACL rule by deleting rows from said run-time compiled ACL table having a respective previously added user ACL rule; and, maintaining said group ACL rules in said run-time compiled ACL table including selectively adding a group ACL rule and selectively updating a group ACL rule.