// using the parent authority and subsegment name, find the subsegment and the authority we are describing now
// we must be prepared to have null values here, since not all pipeline configurations
// may use objects from the store
SubSegment subSegment = null;
Authority authority = null;
if (parentAuthority != null) subSegment = this.store.findSubSegment(parentAuthority, subSegmentName);
if (subSegment != null) authority = this.store.getSubSegmentAuthority(subSegment);