As mentioned above, policies are associated with policy subjects. With WSDL 1.1, the effective policy for a subject is the aggregation, or the merge , of the policies attached to the wsdl elments representing that subject: The effective policy for a service subject is the merge of all policies applying to the wsdl:service element. The effective policy for an endpoint subject is the merge of all policies applying to the wsdl:port, wsdl:portType and wsdl:binding elements. The effective policy for an operation subject is the merge of all policies applying to the wsdl:portType/wsdl:operation and wsdl:binding/wsdl:operation elements. The effective policy for a (input | output | fault) message subject is the merge of all policies applying to the wsdl:message, (wsdl:portType/wsdl:operation/wsdl:input | wsdl:portType/wsdl:operation/wsdl:output | wsdl:portType/wsdl:operation/wsdl:fault) and (wsdl:binding/wsdl:operation/wsdl:input | wsdl:binding/wsdl:operation/wsdl:output | wsdl:binding/wsdl:operation/wsdl:fault).
Additional aggregation takes place to determine the effective policy of an endpoint: The effective policy for a service is the effective policy for the service subject. The effective policy for an endpoint is the merge of the effective policies for the service subject and the endpoint subject. The effective policy for an operation is the merge of the effective policies for the service subject, the endpoint subject and the operation subject. The effective policy for a (input | output | fault) message is the merge of the effective policies for the service subject, the endpoint subject, the operation subject and the message subject.
Multiple sources can be used to apply policies to the same subject. In the case of an endpoint subject for example, its associated wsdl:port element can have multiple wsp:Policy child elements. Also, a separate document can contain wsp:PolicyAttachment elements in which the AppliesTo children identify the endpoint in question as the target subject. Both the Policies attached to the port element as well as those in the matching PolicyAttachment elements will then contribute to the effective policy of the endpoint subject.
It is also important to keep in mind that the aggregation process described above makes it possible for an effective policy to have multiple assertion elements of the same type in one alternative (although this would not be considered the normal case). Different assertions of the same type within the same alternative do not overwrite each other. In fact, if used inappropriately, they may contradict each other. But it is also possible that they complement each other. Either way, the framework does not remove such duplicates and instead leaves it to the interceptors (or other Assertors) involved in the assertion process to decide if they can meaningfully deal with multiple assertions of the same type.
It is obvious that the above aggregation process can be quite resource intense. Effective policies for messages and endpoints are therefore cached by the framework for future reference. The entity that manages the cache of effective policies is the PolicyEngine.
When computing the effective policy for an endpoint or a message, the framework also chooses one of the effective policy's alternatives. Currently, it choses the first alternative in which all assertions may be supported, either by interceptors (i.e. there is a PolicyInterceptorProvider for the assertion type) or by the conduit/destination (if this implements the Assertor interface and through its canAssert method confirms that it can support the assertion type). However, even if such an alternative can be found, the chosen alternative is not necessarily supported: An interceptor may in principle be able to support a specific type of assertions, but it may not actually be able to support an individual instance of that assertion type.
The choice of alternative, along with the set of interceptors (obtained from the PolicyInterceptorProviders in the PolicyInterceptorProviderRegistry), is cached along with the actual effective message or endpoint policy in the form of an EffectivePolicy or EffectiveEndpointPolicy object. In the case of an effective endpoint policy, interceptors are chosen in such a way that the assertions in the chosen alternative of the effective endpoint policy can be supported, but also any assertion in any alternative of any of the operation and message specific policies. This is necessary in situations where the underlying message is not known, for example on the server inbound path: Once an alternative has been chosen for the effective policy of the server's endpoint we know which assertions must definitely be supported, regardless the underlying message/operation. Additional interceptors that are necessary to support the assertions that only appear in specific operation or input message policies are added pre-emptively. Note that this generally requires interceptors to be coded defensively - good practice anyway but especially so for interceptors returned by PolicyInterceptorProviders!