By default, a BIRT design cannot obtain permission to perform a potentially unsafe operation, such as opening an internet connection. If the administrator needs to further restrict operations a BIRT design has permission to perform, the administrator can implement restrictions using a Java policy file. A volume implements a java.security.Policy object. The Policy object obtains permission information from a Java policy file. This section describes how to use a policy file.

If the administrator wants to keep a set of restrictions in place, but the design developer needs to work around a restriction, the developer can implement a Java-based event handler, which the administrator can place in a .jar file in the AC_SERVER_HOME\resources folder. BIRT iHub places no restriction on the actions a program residing in AC_SERVER_HOME/resources may perform. As an example, if a report developer wants to create a BIRT design that obtains customer-specific information from a public entity, the developer can create an event handler that calls an application which obtains the customer information. The administrator places the event handler in AC_SERVER_HOME/resources. When the BIRT design needs to load the customer information, the design calls the event handler, which in turn calls the application that retrieves the customer information.

This section makes reference to the AC_CONFIG_HOME variable, which represents the shared configuration directory which all nodes in a cluster access. In a default BIRT iHub installation on Windows, performed using the installer, in which the install folder is C:\Actuate, AC_CONFIG_HOME represents the following path:

In a cluster consisting of two or more nodes, AC_CONFIG_HOME represents the shared configuration directory the system administrator created before adding the second node to a cluster.