Programming Guides › Programming Guide for Perl › Policy Management API › About the Policy Server and the Policy Management API

About the Policy Server and the Policy Management API

A SiteMinder Policy Server manages data that describes protected resources and the requirements for accessing those resources. A Policy Server also manages information about the administrators of the protected domains. This security data is located in a policy store such as LDAP.

The Policy Management API (module Netegrity::PolicyMgtAPI) lets you perform most of the Policy Server design and administration operations that you can perform with the Administrative UI. For example, you can:

• Create, modify, and delete policy store objects such as domains, realms, rules, and policies
• Manage administrators and user directories

The following illustration shows some of the policy store objects you can manage with the Policy Management API:

In addition, the Policy Management API data management object (PolicyMgtDataMgr) lets you copy specific objects from one policy store to another, rather than an entire policy store or domain as allowed by the SiteMinder smobjexport and smobjmport tools.