Governance Agent's Merge Behavior

The governance agent ensures that new policy actions are successfully merged with the existing policy actions.

The policy decision point maintains a list of actions and the order in which to execute them for a particular governed object in a policy execution point. The list of actions comes from one or more policies applied to the governance agent.

Whenever a policy is applied to a governed object and policy execution point, the governance agent performs the following actions:

  • ensures that new actions do not clash with existing actions
  • positions the new action
  • updates the list of actions

Each action can declare two attributes to specify how to merge instances with existing actions.

The first attribute defines the placement of the action in a given interval. The available options are:
Option Description
First In Interval This means you must place the action before all other actions across types in the same stage and interval. If another action is already placed first due to specifying this attribute value, an error is reported because there can be only one action with this placement value in a given interval for a given policy enforcement point and GO combination.

An example of an action that wants to specify a placement value is a Timer Start Action that begins the measurement of a Service response time.

Last In Interval This means you must place the action after all other actions across types in the same stage and interval. If another action is already placed last due to specifying this attribute value, an error is reported because there can only be one action with this placement value in a given interval for a given policy enforcement point and GO combination.

An example of an action that wants to specify a placement value is a Timer End Action that finishes the measurement of a Service response time.

Sequential In Interval This is the default value if the action does not explicitly specify a placement value. You must place the action instance after all other actions across types in the same stage and interval, but before an action that specified Last In Interval placement value.

Note: Note that the placement of attributes takes effect across all action types in a given interval.
The second attribute defines cardinality of single action type. The available options are:
Option Description
Singleton In Interval This means that there can only be one instance of an Action type in a given Interval for a policy enforcement point and governed object. To add an action if another action of the same type is already present in that interval is invalid. If this occurs, an error is reported.
Singleton In Stage This means that there can only be one instance of an action type in a given stage across its Intervals for a policy enforcement point and governed object. To add an action if another action of the same type is already present in any of the intervals of that stage is invalid. If this occurs, an error is reported.
Singleton In PEP This means that only one instance of an Action type can be present in a given policy enforcement point across stages and intervals for a given governed object. To add an action if another action of the same type is already present in any of the stages and intervals of that policy enforcement point is invalid. If this occurs, an error is reported.
Unbounded This is the default value if the action does not specify a cardinality value. There is no restriction on the number of instances of an action type in the policy enforcement point, stage, and interval for a given action.