Chapter 1 Introduction to Policies and Expressions 5
About Actions and Profiles
Policies do not themselves take action on data. Policies provide read-only logic
for evaluating traffic. To enable a feature to perform an operation based on a
policy evaluation, you configure actions or profiles and associate them with
policies.
Note: Actions and profiles are specific to particular features. For information
about assigning actions and profiles to features, see the documentation for the
individual features.

About Actions

Actions are steps that the NetScaler takes, depending on the evaluation of the
expression in the policy. For example, if an expression in a policy matches a
particular source IP address in a request, the action that is associated with this
policy determines whether the connection is permitted.
The types of actions that the NetScaler can take are feature specific. For example,
in Rewrite, actions can replace text in a request, change the destination URL for a
request, and so on. In Integrated Caching, actions determine whether HTTP
responses are served from the cache or an origin server.
In some NetScaler features actions are predefined, and in others they are
configurable. In some cases, (for example, Rewrite), you configure the actions
using the same types of expressions that you use to configure the associated
policy rule.

About Profiles

Some NetScaler features enable you to associate profiles, or both actions and
profiles, with a policy. A profile is a collection of settings that enable the feature
to perform a complex function. For example, in the Application Firewall, a
profile for XML data can perform multiple screening operations, such as
examining the data for illegal XML syntax or evidence of SQL injection.
Access
Gateway Classic To determine how the Access Gateway performs
authentication, authorization, auditing, and other
functions.
Authorization policies, however, can be
configured with both classic and advanced policy
formats.
NetScaler Feature, Policy Type, and Policy Usage
Feature Name Policy Type How You Use Policies in the Feature