3.1 Guidelines for Customization

The Subscriber channel issues RACF commands to process XDS commands received for objects and attributes represented in the z/OS RACF schema. For details of how these attributes relate with RACF command parameters, see Section A.2, RACF Command Parameter Mapping.

The Subscriber channel constructs RACF commands using the values provided in XDS command documents for users and groups. If the Subscriber channel can successfully construct and issue commands, it returns success status-regardless of the command results. If the values provided in the XDS documents do not conform to RACF requirements, the RACF commands can produce invalid or undesired results.

The Publisher channel generates XDS event documents based on RACF commands and the parameters that are specified on them. Not all of the RACF processing implied by certain combinations of command parameters can be accurately codified in XDS event documents.

As a policy writer, it is your responsibility to understand the limitations of RACF and its command semantics. You must ensure that the values you pass to the Subscriber channel are valid and consistent. You must account for side effects and possible multiple meanings of RACF command parameters and combinations of parameters. You must understand and provide for the differences and limitations in the way eDirectory and RACF attributes with similar functions whose values are derived from one another are implemented by eDirectory and RACF.

For information about how the driver shim processes certain commands and events, see Section A.3, Driver Processing of Attributes and Commands.