Application Resources

Application resources can protect a number of different kinds of assets, all of which are associated with either user-defined applications or applications that come with Caché, and can include entire applications, individual actions in code, or pages in the Management Portal.

For the purposes of Caché security, an application is a software program or group of Caché routines. To protect applications, Caché supports what is called an “application definition.” You can associate an application definition with an Application resource (that is, a resource of type Application); this allows you to establish a privilege that regulates its use. Any role that holds the privilege is entitled to run the application.

There are three types of application definitions:

A privileged routine application definition is associated with one or more Caché routines.
A web application definition is associated with a specific Caché Server Pages (CSP) or Zen application.
A client application definition is associated with one or more specific executable programs, which have been created as clients for a Caché server.

For example, Caché comes with the DocBook web application for displaying documentation; if you are reading this in a browser, then you are using the DocBook application right now. For more information on applications, see the “Applications” chapter.

In addition to using Application resources to protect the application as a whole, you can also use these resources to perform authorization for a particular piece of code or with a particular Portal page. For more information on adding authorization code into an application, see the section “Checking Privileges” in the “Privileges and Permissions” chapter; for more information on authorization checks for a particular Portal page, see the section “Using Custom Resources with the Management Portal” in the “Resources” chapter.