Re: Selectively Control ODBC Access? How?

Hi,
I don't know what ODBC driver are you using, but if it is from Intersolv (MERANT), then they have two kinds of drivers, opened and closed. If you use a closed driver than you have to supply a password from your app to the driver in order for the driver to work. Therefore, no other application can access the DB but your main application. In fact, the closed driver is even cheaper.

Second option is to encrypt the password. Let say user Amy has a password 123abc. Write a small routine that will change 123abc to, lets say, 987zyx and every time a db connection is made decrypt that password to the original. The user thinks that the password is 987zyx but in reality it is 123abc.

Thanks,
Imran.

For FREE Software visit
http://www.imranweb.com/freesoft

Roger Westbrook wrote:

> Ok, there has to be a way to do this.
>
> We've got a 3rd party app which uses ODBC to connect to our Oracle 7.3.4.2 database running on our AIX 4.3.2 box. Each user has their own username but due to the nature of the app each user has pretty much total authority to most of the app's tables. There is a lot of protection built into the app, of course, but that doesn't stop anyone from using that same ODBC link to connect without benefit of the app's controls. So you see where this is going... Once ODBC was set up for the app's connect
ivity we had a few users who "discovered" that you can access the same database with MS ACCESS. Needless to say, I cannot allow this.
> I've already had one of them who decided she didn't like the Transportation Status Codes and wanted change them to something she thought would be more logical. Luckily the referential constraints stopped her and I she came to my desk to ask me if she could borrow my SQL books. I almost had heart failure when as she explained what she wanted to do and how.
>
> So...
>
> I must have the ODBC link for the 3rd party app.
>
> I cannot allow applications like MS Access, or MS Query, etc to connect.
>
> I cannot take MS Access, etc, off their desktops because they use it for other things.
>
> I'm losing sleep over what these morons might do to my data!! What can I do?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Roger Westbrook, DBA/Sys Admin
> Dollar General Corp
> rwestbrook_at_dollargeneral.com

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