The meaning of "stale objects" in Policy Store

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

What is the meaning of "stale objects" in Policy Store?

 

Resolution

This object is marked with an XPSTombstone.

This XPSNumber was tied to an object with OID having the following format: xx-xxxxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx-xxx.

The SiteMinder Policy Store is really somewhat like two parallel DB’s.

The traditional Policy Store has been used since R6 and earlier.

The XPSExtensions are essentially a set of pointers which relate to the data in the Policy Store.

This works a bit like an Index, or a Virtual List, or a Virtual table (in ODBC).

When the object is deleted using a non-XPS Tools (e.g. FSSAdminUI, Policy Store API, smobjimport), the object is created in the traditional Policy Store, but the XPS extensions do not get updated automatically.

XPSSweeper will essentially update the XPSExtensions by adding the data that points back to the newly created data, or deleting the data.

In additional any data which is deleted using an XPSTool (e.g. XPSExplorer, SMAdminUI, etc.), these objects are asynchronously deleted in XPS directly.

However, they aren’t deleted immediately.

They are marked with an XPSTombstone.

Above, the XPSNumber references the GUID of the object.

That GUID no longer exists in the Policy Store.

The Housekeeping thread is run to delete the objects marked with an XPSTombstone.

The Housekeeping thread is executed by Policy Server at 5 minutes interval as the default, and XPSSweeper include this function.