Public Attribute System: A Novel Way to User Profiling

This paper presents, as an alternative to local user profiling of applications, the model and the implementation of a Public Attribute System, able to centrally manage access control lists to different applications and their data. The main innovative aspects, introduced by the proposed solution, concern the possibility to modify and extended rights of users directly by the application owners, instead of by system administrators, ensuring their real time update and allowing their public use to all the applications requiring them, to manage their own user access profiling. The main strength of the solution presented lies in its architectural and functional simplicity, based on widespread and consolidated technologies, in its modularity, which allows its easy maintenance and extension, and in its replicability, given the generality and configurability of the solution presented.