1. A method, comprising: providing an access control policy for a structured document, wherein the access control policy comprises a plurality of access control rules; generating a path for each of a plurality of nodes in the structured document; transforming the plurality of access control rules into an executable value expression for each generated path by using a condition that indicates who is granted and/or denied access to each generated path, wherein transforming further comprises: normalizing the plurality of access control rules into a format; converting the plurality of normalized access control rules into a plurality of modified normalized access control rules; propagating the plurality of modified normalized access control rules for each generated path to identify at least one generated path that is affected by at least one of the plurality of modified normalized access control rules; combining at least two modified normalized access control rules of the plurality of modified normalized access control rules, if the at least two modified normalized access control rules affects a particular generated path; and generating the executable value expression for each generated path using the combined modified normalized access control rules; populating a condition table for the converting; and optimizing the plurality of modified normalized access control rules by eliminating repeated value expressions.