Figure 1P-20 - PolicyApp Interactions

The purpose of this section is to describe how policy can be used to build a policy based management system.
A PolicyApplication is a special type of entity for use in policy-based management applications.
The ScopedManagedEntities aggregation defines the set of ManagedEntities that are contained in a particular ManagementDomain.
The ScopedPolicyApplication aggregation defines which PolicyApplications are scoped by a particular PolicyDomain. This is an important concept, as this controls what PolicyApplications can work on what ManagedEntities. Note that containment in a ManagementDomain implies the ability for said ManagedEntities to be managed by a particular PolicyApplication. The HasPolicySubDomains recursive aggregation enables hierarchies of PolicyDomains to be constructed. This is particularly useful for associating organizational hierarchies to PolicyApplications.
The logic behind scoping in general, and the ScopedPolicyApplication and ScopedManagedEntities aggregations, is complicated and not suitable to a business discussion.
The PolicyAppInvolvedWith association defines the set of PolicyApplications that are involved with processing policy decisions and performing policy actions on a set of ManagedEntities. Note that this association does NOT imply an action being taken on a ManagedEntity. Rather, it shows that a PolicyApplication is involved with applying policy to a particular ManagedEntity. For example, a policy-based management system may be measuring the performance of a particular ManagedEntity, so that policy can be used to change its configuration if the performance violates an associated SLA. The monitoring PolicyApplication is not applying actions to the ManagedEntity – rather, it is performing monitoring on the ManagedEntity so that another PolicyApplication can correct the operation of the ManagedEntity if needed.