Subject
A subject is an entity designated as the focus of representation, data modeling, or an authorization policy.
Grokking Relational Database Design
A subject is a person, place, thing, event, or other real-world item identified as relevant to a database design.
- How it is used
- Identifies real-world items during requirements gathering so designers can capture characteristics and relationships.
- How deep it goes
- Defines subjects and maps them to entities, stopping short of detailed database implementation.
- Examples
- Uses people, places, things, events, and an employee-to-entity conversion as examples.
- What you can do after
- Understand how to identify relevant subjects and translate them into entities with attributes.
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Authorization in Action
A subject is the entity referred to in an account, policy, or authorization decision, potentially referring to a principal or resource.
- How it is used
- Clarifies who an account, policy, or authorization decision refers to, especially when requester and affected entity differ.
- How deep it goes
- Defines subject, contrasts it with principal, and shows attribute-based treatment in XACML without developing a typed subject model.
- Examples
- Uses parent-on-behalf-of-child access and XACML attributes such as username, department, and clearance.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate authorization terminology and distinguish the requester from the entity represented in a policy or access decision.
Related concepts
- entitykind of · An entity is a distinct, identifiable person, object, event, or concept represented as a unit in a data, software, or semantic model.
- authorizationused by · Authorization is the determination and enforcement of rules governing which subjects may access resources or perform operations.
- principalcontrasts with · A principal is a security identity representing an entity, such as a person, application, service, machine, or process, in an authentication or authorization system.
- objectuses · A computational object is a runtime entity or structured value representing data, state, or a resource, with properties or operations defined by its programming model.
- promptpart of · An input, typically containing instructions or context, supplied to an artificial-intelligence model to guide or elicit its output.
- identity platformpart of · An identity platform is a system that manages digital identities, authentication, identity attributes, credentials, and access authorization for users or services.
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