Restricting Proprietary Database Access
I read on a thread in a newsgroup yesterday where the writer uses SQL Server for persistence in their application. However, they want to lock the database down so that it cannot be manipulated by their customers.
The designer wants to configure the database so that it is completely un-accessible to anything except their proprietary application. They want to completely disable all ability to run ad-hoc SQL of any form.
It is possible to use SQL Server authentication and manage that from the application itself so that the database connection credentials are never exposed to end users. However, the SA account will have full rights to the database. Perhaps they could do a separate standalone instance and disable the SA account. But can they disable the Windows Administrator account?
Of course they could take the approach Great Plains did in their accounting package by using obfuscation. All database objects were provided un-meaningful names such as T01291, C012381, P12717, etc. You had to be a Great Plains consultant to get access to the key for the database objects. So, even with full access to the database, it would be a bit of work to determine the schema and other database objects.
What would you do? Do you have any other ideas for locking down a proprietary database distributed to end users? Drop me a note at btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
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