It is great that multiple concurrent users can make changes to an Access database at the same time.
Is Aceess itself keeping track of who made what changes, when?
i.e. if one user is logged in with User Authentication as user "Bob", and another user is "Fred", will there be a way to find out if it was Bob or Fred that made a certain change to the database?
Does each change to the Access database get a timestamp of when it occured?
Short answer is no. Access does not keep an audit of who changed what or when. It also lacks any system (like triggers) that would enable you to keep these logs reliably. Instead, the best you can do is code your application to write necessary audit information to a seperate table but users will be able to bypass it with a little know how. You'll also need to correctly setup access / jet security to prevent users from being able to modify the audit table.
Related
Let me preface this with the fact that I don't know much about VBA. I have created a database that will be split and the front end will be distributed to 14 different project managers. The database is intended to allow users to enter bi-weekly updates to their projects. I hope to get some guidance on creating usernames and passwords so that PMs can only access their project data.
I don't mind creating and issuing usernames and passwords to each user, but I am trying to avoid creating 14 copies of the database. That would make providing updated databases a nightmare.
Hopefully this isn't too basic of a question for this group.
yes, you can control users access, you need to create a user table in your backend database that will hold their firstname, surname, password, and any other user specific data that you might need, e.g. department, access level, etc.
In your front end, you need a login form and you make that the Display Form for your fe (set in the access options menu). You check the username and password entered matches what is held in your database, and if it's correct, you load the appropriate form, usually a main menu, and show them the appropriate data based on the login they used. You may need to hold the login they used in a TempVar, so you can access it from any form, report, query etc in your frontend.
You will need something like LASsie (Light Application Security) or program a similar solution yourself.
Also, you may enjoy my article Deploy and update a Microsoft Access application with one click.
(If you don't have an account, browse for the link: Read the full article.)
We have a Power User who knows the database very well and has become a great asset since we gave him access with SQL Server Management Studio. Unfortunately, we also gave him a user/pwd used by all Development which carries ability to change data.
Without going into all the wrongs behind having such a privileged db-user and giving such access an end user, is there a tool that would give the user ability to query without any ability to update/insert/drop/ or anything else?
My guess is that the user probably does not want to change the database -- for his/her protection as well as yours.
Just enable this user's login using Window to have read-only access. Or, set up another read-only user and give it to the power user. At the extreme, you may need to change the password of your super user account.
I would recommend in the mean time that you set up a development group, give the group privileges, and assign the developers to the group. They can then login through that id. Perhaps one day, you'll be able to disable your super user account. For now, you should think about ways to work around it.
I installed postgreSQL by default with apt-get and I believe it has automatically added a user for me called "postgres".
I only have one database that I want to sort on postgres, so is
there any point creating another user account for this database or
should I just keep with the one which is installed with postgreSQL
"postgres"?
The user account postgres which is made for me, is it given some
kind of default password? Is it recommended that I put in my own
password?
EDIT: I misinterpreted the question, the OP is asking about internal users, not system users
Original Answer: System users for running servers
Most services running on a linux box are given their own independent user, as a standard security practice. In the off-chance that the postgreSQL server was compromised -- either you made a mistake, or there was a vulnerability in postgresql, or whatever -- the attacker can only gain access to the resources allowed to the user running the postgresql server. If that user is root, you lose the machine. If that user is your user, you lose not quite as much. If that user is postgres, which only has minimal access to anything.. you lose the database, and that's all.
So:
You merely need a single user for the postgreSQL server, regardless of what, exactly, that server process is hosting. If (it sounds like one was) a user was created for you automatically, you're all set with this step. If you need to make one manually (sounds like you don't), you would also have to change the permissions so that the new user can access only what it needs to.
That account very possibly cannot be directly logged into; if it has a password at all it's a lot of random data. In order to use the account, you need to start out as root, and then voluntarily "downgrade" yourself to postgres. In the case of the server, root starts the server "under the name of" postgres. I would advise leaving it alone.
Second Answer: Database users
Once you have a server running, the server will keep its own set of users, for the purposes of accessing the database. The simplest architecture you could use there is just having a base user with full permissions do everything. While this works, it is not advised if you are hosting this externally. A more preferable solution is to have a set of users, similar to how the OS is set up: a bunch of users to do specific tasks, and one admin user to rule them all. That said:
You don't have to, but if you are going to host this anywhere (if you're not just using it for personal things, and it's world-accessible), I would advise extra users with limited permissions.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-admin/2001-10/msg00192.php
There is no password by default; create one with ALTER USER.
Passwords do not take effect unless pg_hba.conf is set up to use them. If
it is, and you have not assigned a password to postgres, you will not be
able to connect as postgres.
re 1)
the default database user that is created during installation is a "superuser" and for the same reason you should not do your daily work as "root", you shouldn't work with a superuser in a DBMS. So the answer is a clear: yes, do create a second user. You can grant that role all privileges on the default database (also called postgres), so that you don't need a second database.
More details on how to create a user and how to grant privileges can be found in the manual:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-createuser.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-grant.html
re 2)
I don't know Linux that well, but usually you should have been asked for a password during installation. At some point in the installation a new data directory is initialized using the command initdb which requires a password to run.
If you don't know the password, you log into the postgres linux account, then you can probably run psql without specifying a password. That enables you to reset the database password and create a new user.
More details about users and authentication are in the manual:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/client-authentication.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/user-manag.html
I have a large web application that relies on database (MSSSQL 2008) triggers to perform some of its functions. It offers a web-interface which allows the end user to make form-based changes to the database.
The issue is - when the web application is run with one userid in the apppool, the database triggers don't get triggered (they have logging functionality which enables me to see that); but if I change the userid in the AppPool to another username/password, these triggers are executed. Note that the table updates are performed in both scenarios. This is the only difference I can spot between the system behavior under the two different circumstances. Both users have dbo privileges, and are able to read/write into the database.
Any thoughts on what may be causing this?
Thanks.
*UPDATE:
Neither user is sysadmin; this happens for ALL of my database triggers. *
*UPDATE #2:
After digging more into the problem, I found out that the logging function was relying on a queue (yes, I know) that has inconsistent behavior for the two user accounts. To me this means that the permissions for both accounts are somehow mismatched and that is most likely the root of the problem. *
This turned out to be a nondescript permissions error for that particular user account. When the account was removed from the database and added back in - the triggers, logging, and all related events started working appropriately.
I'm working on a Delphi/WIN32 application that uses an SQL Server database as back-end, using ADO to access the data. There are many users who use this application, but one user is using a special setup: they have multiple database schema's and every schema contains the complete datamodel for the application. Every schema also has a database user which defaults to the specific schema. They also have a separate login account for every database user, allowing them to control which schema to use simply by using a different login account in the connection string.
They use this setup to have a single, centralized database which supports multiple offices. Normally, every office would have it's own database but here, every office has their own schema.
I like this solution that they're using. I haven't thought about this before simply because the application is normally used by single offices. Only this customer had a need to have a centralized database. The application works just fine, even though it's unaware of these schema's, simply because the login account will default to the correct schema.
But now they've asked if it's possible to change the code in a way that the user can select the schema to which they want to connect. Thus, a user needs to be able to switch between schema's in the application. And I don't want to rewrite the code to support these schema's simply because I need to keep the SQL code database neutral. So I'm looking for a way to switch a user to another schema without much impact on the code itself.
Any suggestions?
How about changing the default schema of the user?
ALTER USER <user name>
WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA = <desired schema>;
Of course you will need to execute this under escalated privileges as I'm sure you don't have all users with ALTER USER capabilities.