Abstract: A distributed system includes two or more components, where at least one of the components is a Policy Decision Point (PDP). The PDP is capable of requesting information from another component of the distributed system, and the PDP is capable of executing an authorization process based on one or more policies defined in a policy language. The policy language includes a communicate command, an execution of which causes the PDP to request information from another component in the distributed system. The policy language also includes a fail operator, which defines handling of failures of the communicate command. An analysis tool for analyzing a result of an authorization process in a Policy Decision Point is also described.