# OpenAM Administration Guide
Chapter 4. Defining Entitlements

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## 4.1. About Entitlements

OpenAM entitlements serve much the same purpose as OpenAM policies, defining who has access to what, under what conditions. OpenAM stores and manages policies centrally using the standard eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). You can access OpenAM entitlements and policy decisions using the RESTful web interface, for even lighter weight policy enforcement than with OpenAM policy agents.

The OpenAM entitlements service uses XACML terminology to refer to the different points dealing with policy.

- OpenAM serves as a policy administration point (PAP) where you define, store, and manage policies. OpenAM uses the configuration directory to store entitlements, whereas profiles are stored in the identity repository (user data store).

- OpenAM also serves as a policy decision point (PDP), evaluating policies and issuing authorization decisions, and as a policy information point, providing the information needed for authorization decisions.

- OpenAM policy agents act as policy enforcement points, obtaining decisions from PDPs to protect access to resources.

Entitlement policies define who has who has access to what, under what conditions, in the same way that other OpenAM policies define policy. Entitlement policies do let you define virtual subjects and subjects based on attribute lookup to determine who has access to the resources.

Entitlements apply for applications, which in this context mean protected resources that share a common set of actions and related policies. For example, the web agent application protects web resources accessed through HTTP GET and POST actions using a web policy agent to enforce decisions to allow or deny access. You can also define more specific applications as demonstrated by the examples delivered with OpenAM.

Delegations grant specific users privileges to manage policies.