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.
Related
I am deploying a web application, this is not a production application but it's important to me none the less. I am deploying it via dacpac and I would like to script out the creation of a login / user account with sql server authentication.
At minimum this users will need access to read, write, update, and delete on all of the database tables, these tables are separated into different schema's. The user will also need access to execute all stored procedures and functions in my database.
How would i script this out? What permissions do I give to the user?
This is what i got so far, I actually have no database tables in the dbo schema, but since this was the default for sql server i figured it might make sense to leave it the default for the user, but i would like to finish this script giving explicit access to all tables in a given schema with all of the permissions i listed, as well as permission to sprocs and functions.
CREATE LOGIN [webProcessLogin] WITH PASSWORD = 'Pa$$word';
CREATE USER webProcessUser FOR LOGIN
[webProcessLogin]
WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=[dbo];
GRANT CONNECT TO [webProcessUser]
So I wanted to know if there is an acceptable method to Allow SQL Injection.
Example:
Limit permissions on the table(s)/database(s)
Why you ask?
My employer wanted to devise a way to test the skills of applicants, one suggestion was to allow resume submissions via SQL Injection.
Any thoughts? suggestions?
You could use roles. Create a role for the web application (or whatever) that is used to connect to the database. Limit this role to only permit INSERT and access to necessary tables for applying. Applicants with access to your database through the application could then only use SQL injections to add their resume.
It may be possible for someone more talented in SQL to use injections in a way that increases the role's permission. But I think if the role had limited access to only specific tables and didn't have CREATE or GRANT privileges, the user wouldn't be able to create new roles.
Here is some information on roles to get you started:
Adding Roles to MySQL with MySQL Workbench
Creating Roles in PostgreSQL
GRANT command - used to add privileges to users on table, database, etc. This page is for PostgreSQL, but MySQL is very similar (see this SO answer)
Given that the reason behind this is to test people's ability, create a database with data you can afford to lose. Set up a form that posts to a coldfusion or php or java or .net or some other type of page which connects to that database.
On the form, put a textarea and submit button. On the form target page, log what they put in the textarea. Compare the log to the database to see how it turned out.
Then test to your heart's delight.
my question is rather simple.
Can i grant permissions on a database table wise? something in the lines:
User Management has permission to select, update, insert and delete on table Projects
User Supervisor has permission to select, update, insert on table Projects
User Colaborator has permission to select on table Projects
If so, I could set up a system to create database users based on the levels of access of my application, much like the examples above.
Is it a valid mechanism to use this to secure a application?
is it worth on a real world application?
i've used PHP with Oracle and MySQL, but I'm look for a database/language agnostic answer, but any example would be useful.
pushing my luck a bit, what about per record permission granting?
also, what about table schemas, are they a more acceptable then table based permissions?
The main problem with using database security would be that you need separate connections for each user rather than being able to use a "service user" for the connection from your application server to your DB server. That would mean that you would no longer be able to use database connection pooling have to "connect" and "disconnect" from the database for every user request, which is not very efficient as connections are relatively expensive.
Having said that, there is good reason for using separate users in the database, such as DATA_USER (which the application server connects as) and DATA_OWNER (which owns all the tables but is used only for DB maintenance) and then only give DATA_USER the permissions that it needs to, e.g. only select on a lookup table. By separating DATA_USER and DATA_OWNER you can add an additional level of confidence that your application won't issue DDL commands (e.g. dropping a table).
Answer to part 1:
Yes as long as you handle the responses correctly.
Part 2:
It's not as good as implementating security in the application layer, as most applications will need flexibility in the solution (what if you want a user to get increased privledges, have to code in lots of alter/deny/grant scripts)
Part 3: (Speaking from purely MSSQL) Row-level permissions aren't possible. Create custom views for this purpose.
I am new to schema, roles and user management part in sql server. Till now I used to work with simple dbo schema but now after reading few articles I am intrested in creating schema for managing my tables in a folder fashion.
At present, I want to create a schema where i want to keep my tables that have same kind of functionality. When I tries to create a schema then I faces a problem while using query, permissions etc.
First of all i want to get used to of using schemas then only I want to explore it. But due to initial stages and work pressure as well i m not able to implement it yet.
What can i do to start using schema with default permissions as that of dbo.
Also let me know about creating roles and assigning roles on these schema. I want all this to be accessible by sa user itself at present.
What is the concept behind all these things
Basically
The schema has an owner
Objects in different schemas can access each other with no extra permissions if they have the same owner
Please see my question here: "SQL Server: How to permission schemas?" and RBarryYoung's enlightening answer...
I'm quite new to Microsoft SQL Server. I have some experience with MySQL, and there you have a user with privileges, if I understand things right; these privileges decide which databases you have access to on the MySQL server.
However now I am in the situation where I have to restore a database on my SQL Server 2005 Express, and this database has it's own users and user password. So if I want to make these users accessible from the outside (so that they can connect to my server), how would I go about that?
To illustrate clearer; say there are two login accounts on the database server "Mike" and "John", and on the database "Animals" there are two users; "Chris" and "Jeff".
I need Jeff to be able to sign in to get access to the database. Is there a good way to make this happen without creating new users/logins? And if not, what is the best/most common solution?
I would really appreciate any helpful input on this!
One server-level object (login) is mapped to multiple database-level objects (users).
A login cannot be mapped to more than one user within a database, but can be mapped to at most one user in each database.
Therefore, you need to create new logins for those users, but map them to existing users. This is done with ALTER USER command. Or, if you don't have any use for the Mike and John logins apart from mapping them to those existing users, you can do so, too.
Any user needing to access a database needs to either have their own login, or you can create a login for a Windows security group and grant access that way to a whole set of users. Then if you need to give access to more users in the future you can just add them to the windows security group.