The policy processor module in the Oracle Certificate Authority engine enforces policy rules in the order they are displayed in the table in the main Policy page for a particular operation. Policies appearing later in the table take precedence over those at the top of the table, but only if the attributes tested in both policies are identical.
For example: You have enabled the default ValidityRule policy, which sets the minimum certificate validity period to 90 days, and it appears at the top of the table. Then you write a custom policy that sets the minimum certificate validity period to 30 days, name it NewValidityRule, register it with Oracle Certificate Authority, and enable it. This NewValidityRule policy appears toward the bottom of the table. When the policy processor module enforces policy rules, the 30 day certificate validity period that is defined in NewValidityRule will supersede the 90 day period that the ValidityRule policy enforces because the new custom policy appears later in the table.
As you add qualifiers to predicates, applying precedence rules becomes more complicated. For a discussion of the consequences of applying policy precedence rules, see Oracle Certificate Authority Administrator's Guide.
To reorder the precedence of policies:
On the main Policy page of the Configuration Management tab, select the Operation type for the policies you want to reorder and click Go. A list of policies for that Operation type displays.
Click Reorder. The Policy rule reorder list page appears for the Operation type you selected in Step 1.
In the policy rule reorder list, select the policy rule you want to reorder and click the arrows to move it up and down in the list. Note: Policy rules that appear at the top of the list are applied to an operation first; those that appear at the bottom of the list are applied last.
Click OK to save your changes and to return to the main Policy page.
Restart the Oracle Certificate Authority server for your changes to take effect. See Starting and Stopping Oracle Certificate Authority Server