060 - Enterprise Commerce & Entitlement Engine (Commerce-Auth)

Overview: A centralized Policy Decision Point (PDP) API that decouples authorization logic from application code, evaluating complex business rules around product sales, geographic restrictions, and customer resource entitlements.
Architecture & Concepts:
Pattern: Externalized Authorization Architecture using Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC).
Core Tech: Policy Engine (using declarative language like Rego or Cedar), high-speed in-memory store/cache for low-latency context retrieval, REST/gRPC API middleware.
Core Policy Scenarios:
Sales Business Logic: Evaluates combinations of customer tier, geographic region, and cart metadata (e.g., "Restrict purchase of Tier-3 data products unless the user profile includes regional data-residency compliance" or "Block promotional discounts if customer lifetime is under 30 days").
Customer Resource Quotas: Dynamically determines access to software, SaaS features, API rate limits, or microservices based on real-time subscription status and usage thresholds.
Capstone Deliverables:
Declarative policy repository with comprehensive automated unit and integration tests.
Low-latency /authorize API accepting standard Identity Provider (IdP) tokens (JWTs), target resource IDs, and contextual attributes.
Mock commerce client demonstrating real-time enforcement at checkout and resource access points.