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Database Security
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Databases often contain sensitive information. Different databases provide security schemes for protecting that information. Some databases, such as Paradox and dBASE, only provide security at the table or field level. When users try to access protected tables, they are required to provide a password. Once users have been authenticated, they can see only those fields (columns) for which they have permission.

Most SQL servers require a password and user name to use the database server at all. Once the user has logged in to the database, that username and password determine which tables can be used. For information on providing passwords to SQL servers, see Controlling server login.

When designing database applications, you must consider what type of authentication is required by your database server. Often, applications are designed to hide the explicit database login from users, who need only log in to the application itself. If you do not want to require your users to provide a database password, you must either use a database that does not require one or you must provide the password and username to the server programmatically. When providing the password programmatically, care must be taken that security can't be breached by reading the password from the application.

If you require your user to supply a password, you must consider when the password is required. If you are using a local database but intend to scale up to a larger SQL server later, you may want to prompt for the password at the point when you will eventually log in to the SQL database, rather than when opening individual tables.

If your application requires multiple passwords because you must log in to several protected systems or databases, you can have your users provide a single master password that is used to access a table of passwords required by the protected systems. The application then supplies passwords programmatically, without requiring the user to provide multiple passwords.

In multi-tiered applications, you may want to use a different security model altogether. You can use HTTPs or COM+ to control access to middle tiers, and let the middle tiers handle all details of logging into database servers.

See Also

Types of Databases

Transactions

The Data Dictionary

Referential Integrity

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