Acessing data - security versus ease of use

I was wondering how people allow clients to access the data from their databases?

All of our machines are locked down with firewall rules, so that only a few people are allowed through the firewall; however, this prevents people accessing the data with ODBC which means complex methods of replicating data and allowing it to be accessed are used, ie dumping the data into another database which is less secure.

What sort of middle tier applications or gateways are people using?

Are there any alternatives such as using some sort of ODBC connection over https? Received on Tue Dec 02 2003 - 21:38:11 CST