1. A method of enforcing application-layer policies to application layer formatted documents, each policy defining a rule and an action, comprising: a) distinctly storing simple policies and complex policies applicable to the application layer formatted documents in a simple policies data structure and respectively a complex policies data structure; b) parsing a document received as streaming application layer data in a hierarchical structure, for enabling evaluation of an object in the document; c) simultaneously querying the simple and complex policies data structures to identify all policies corresponding to the object; d) discontinue the query for that object in the simple and complex policies data structures once all simple and complex policies that match the object are identified; and e) executing the actions defined by the simple and complex policies corresponding to the object.