23. A method for evaluating a request for a policy-based service management decision by a hardware-based policy management interface subsystem, comprising: receiving, using a processor, a request from a policy enforcement element for a service management decision associated with an access attempt to a network or a network resource by a subscriber device; retrieving, using a processor, one or more policy instances comprising of one or more rule definitions necessary to process the service management decision request, wherein the policy instance determines a set of actions, and wherein one or more rule definitions contain one or more rule definition variables wherein the rule definition variable is associated with a value selected from a user-defined value set; retrieving, using a processor, the user-defined value set for each variable defined in one or more retrieved rule definitions; substituting, using a processor, one or more values in the user-defined value set corresponding to each rule definition variable into the rule definitions in real-time as the rule is being evaluated; evaluating, using a processor, each of the retrieved policy instances to determine if the set of actions defined in the policy is to be performed by the policy enforcement element; and communicating a result of the evaluation to the policy enforcement element.
29. The method of claim 23 , further comprising: retrieving information from an application programming interface prior to evaluating the retrieved policies.