USE OF RULES ENGINE TO BUILD NAMESPACES

A containment mechanism provides for the grouping and isolation of multiple processes running on a single computer using a single instance of the operating system. A system environment is divided into one or more side-by-side and/or nested spaces enabling the partitioning and controlled sharing of resources by creating different views of hierarchical name spaces via virtual hierarchies. A set of declarative rules specifying access capabilities may specify a set of filter drivers to be used to limit access to nodes in the hierarchical name space. The rules may be applied in sequence to construct a new name space from an existing one, or to add to an existing hierarchy. Filter drivers are used to limit access to nodes in the new name space or new portion of the name space. Access to nodes can be limited (read-only access instead of read/write) or nodes can be hidden altogether. Rules may be specified in a declarative language such as XML.