Policy Server Guides › Policy Server Configuration Guide › User Directories › Named Expressions

Named Expressions

User directories store user attributes such as organizational information, user and group attributes, and individual credentials. SiteMinder can read some user attribute values directly from the user directory, while other values must be calculated each time that they are needed. These calculations are stored as expressions that can be named or unnamed.

Unnamed expressions are stored in policy store objects like responses and rules. Named expressions are policy store objects that can be referenced by name and reused. SiteMinder evaluates all expressions, both named and unnamed, to determine the values of calculated user attributes.

To create named expressions, an administrator must have the appropriate privileges.

Note: Active expressions and named expressions are not the same. While both types of expressions are evaluated at run-time, they differ in the following ways:

• While active expressions are Boolean expressions, named expressions can return a string, number, or Boolean value.
• While active expressions are referenced as is and must be reentered each time that they are used, named expressions are referenced by name and can be referenced from anywhere and reused.