Oracle Developer Questions

[Quoted] I am a software developer doing comparative research on DBMS systems. I am interested in the following items:

1. Application Database Security: As a developer of a database application
   [Quoted] (ISV) using Oracle 8 as a backend database, can I secure ALL parts of the
   database from ALL users of the Oracle 8 server? This would include administrators, etc. Only my application would have the password(s) to access the database including database schema, stored procedures, etc. I am [Quoted] interested in securing parts of the application database so that it can be [Quoted] accessed via only my application GUI. Two reasons for doing this are: (a) this information is very similar to source code (it is not the data entered [Quoted] by the application user), and (b) for support-related issues, it helps reduce the possibility that some rogue Oracle user will damage the inner-workings of the application. Can Oracle 8 do this? If so, to what extent?
2. Licensing/Deployment Details: What are the licensing issues with developing/deploying on Oracle 8? I assume that if the application runs on an existing Oracle server installation, the server will need the appropriate number of client licenses? Can an application developer also distribute the Personal Edition with an application where an organization does not already have Oracle? Does the application developer need to simply to host the application's Oracle database on the users desktop computer? Is there a run-time version? What are the rough costs for these smaller situations
   (e.g., not server-related).
   

If there are any good sources for this information, please let me know. I have just signed up with OTN on Oracle's web site, so I hope to learn more there. Thanks in advance.

John Received on Mon Jan 31 2000 - 00:00:00 CET