P4A DocumentationGlossary
Quick definitions for the terms you'll see in P4A.
Overview
This page provides concise definitions for the key concepts and terminology used throughout P4A.
A–Z
Active business group — an Anypoint business group that the connection's Connected App can currently reach and has at least one active deployment in. Counted in the per-connection and per-workspace Active BGs tile.
Active deployment — a policy or ruleset deployment whose runtime status is live (published or released). Failed, deleted, or pending rows are not counted. The Active deployments tile and column reflect only this live set.
Active policy — a policy that has at least one active deployment through the connection or workspace. The same policy deployed to several business groups still counts as one active policy. Surfaced in the Active policies tile and card.
Active ruleset — a ruleset that has at least one active deployment (a live publish to Exchange) through the workspace's connections. The same ruleset published to several business groups still counts as one active ruleset. Surfaced in the Active rulesets card on a workspace's Rulesets tab.
Completes idea — an admin-only assertion, set on a delivery link, that this policy's coverage finishes off the idea even if it's only partial. A partial link marked as completing the idea flips the idea to Delivered. Full-coverage links always complete the idea.
Conformance — whether an API or agent specification passes every rule in the rulesets applied to it. In Anypoint API Governance, an API is conformant when none of its rules at the violation severity fail. Warnings and info findings don't affect conformance. See Rulesets in P4A.
Connected App — an Anypoint Platform credential type used to grant P4A permission to publish policies into your Anypoint organisation. See Deploying a Policy for setup instructions.
Coverage — how much of an idea a delivery link covers: full (the policy delivers the whole idea) or partial (it delivers a slice, described by an optional scope note).
Delivery link — the connection between a policy and a Policy Idea it delivers. Links are many-to-many — one policy may deliver several ideas, and one idea may be delivered by several policies, each with its own coverage. A link is declared while the policy is under review and becomes committed once the policy is approved and published. See Submitting an Idea.
Governance profile — the Anypoint API Governance object that applies one or more rulesets to a selected set of APIs and reports their conformance. To use a P4A ruleset, publish it to your Exchange and add it to a governance profile. See Rulesets in P4A.
Idea — a lightweight request for a policy you'd like to see, distinct from a full submission. Ideas help the community understand demand without requiring you to build the policy yourself. See Submitting an Idea for details.
Lifecycle state — the status of your submission as it moves through the review process: submitted, under_review, needs_improvement, published, or rejected. See Lifecycle states under Submitting a policy for what each means and what actions you can take.
Partially delivered — a derived display state for an idea that has one or more committed delivery links but none that is full-coverage or marked as completing it. The idea shows a Partially delivered badge and stays open to further delivery. It is a display-only state — not a distinct lifecycle status. See Submitting an Idea.
PDK — the Omni Gateway Policy Development Kit, MuleSoft's framework for writing custom policies. All policies submitted to P4A must be built using the PDK.
Policy — a piece of code that runs in the gateway request path to enforce rules or modify behaviour. Common examples include authentication checks, rate-limiting, request transformation, or security filtering.
Policy submission — a public PDK policy project that you've pointed P4A at for review and listing. Once approved, your submission appears in the policy library and can be deployed to Anypoint Platform. See Submitting a Policy for the full process.
Ruleset — a set of API Governance rules that checks API or agent specifications at design time, before anything is deployed. A ruleset is not a gateway policy: a policy acts on live traffic, while a ruleset checks the specification. Each rule has a severity: violation, warning, or info. See Rulesets in P4A and Submitting a ruleset.
Validation Profile — the YAML format a ruleset is written in, defined by the AMF custom validator. The file starts with the #%Validation Profile 1.0 header, names the profile, lists rules under each severity, and defines them under validations. See Submitting a ruleset.
Vault — the encrypted store where P4A keeps your Connected App secret at rest. Secrets are encrypted using Supabase Vault and are never exposed in plaintext through the interface.
Workspace — the unit in P4A that owns Anypoint connections and deployments and groups members for sharing. Every account has a personal workspace; users can also create or join shared workspaces. Each membership has a role — Owner, Admin, or Member — that controls what you can do. See Using workspaces.