User Logins

F

Freehal04

After much work and migranes, I've got my database working the way I want it
to in all areas. Finally!

I have a question about user accounts and security issues. Do I need to
great a login account for every user? or can it be a generic login everyone
uses. I'm not sure how many total users I will have, but if the number gets
big, that just means more accounts I have to manage. And how does that all
affect secuity?

Also, what are the advantages/disadvantages of having a front/back end
setup? I'm not sure I should bother with that or not?

Thanks for your input.
 
D

Daniel

A lot to cover!

Front-end Back-end. If you are deploying your db for multi-user use you
must split your db to avoid corruption (I'm talking from experience!). It
takes 2 seconds to do and will save you a lot of trouble down the road. It
simplifies future development as well. If you leave it as is, if you want to
make changes you have to take the entire db offline. If you split it, you
can work on a copy of the front-end and then deploy the new version when your
dev is completed.

As for security, once again in a multi-user environment I would highly
suggest user-level security (every user gets a username and password). Yes
it requires more work but it also gives you more control over how is doing
what! To simplify managing this info, you can create form and associate
managers, dept heads, leads (what ever term your company uses)... to be
responsible for creating and maintaining their team user accounts that way
you are only needed to intervien from time to time. Delegate what you can!
 
M

Mr. B

After much work and migranes, I've got my database working the way I want it
to in all areas. Finally!

I have a question about user accounts and security issues. Do I need to
great a login account for every user? or can it be a generic login everyone
uses. I'm not sure how many total users I will have, but if the number gets
big, that just means more accounts I have to manage. And how does that all
affect secuity?

Also, what are the advantages/disadvantages of having a front/back end
setup? I'm not sure I should bother with that or not?

Thanks for your input.
Click to expand...

I'll address the frontend/backend issue first. By all means, if you
are going to have more that a single user, split your database into
the FE and BE. There is nothing to it. Just user the wizzard and you
have it.

As for the security issues: This depends on the nature of your
database. If you need security, then you need to implement some mehod
for handling the fact that you do not want to allow certain user
access to certain parts of you applicaiton.

There are many database applications that just do not need any kind of
security as you would normally think of security. If you split the FE
and BE and deploy your applicaiton using the method as designed by
Microsoft the you will already have a certain amont of "user"
restrictions. By this I mean, if you have the BE on a shared drive of
the network (only user that have access to that shared folder would be
able to see the data) then when you deploy you applicaiton by
providing a FE to each user, then each of these users is the only
peoply who would even have a copy of your applicaiton.

As I said, it all depends on just what your applicaiton requires.

HTH

Mr. B
 
F

Freehal04

Daniel,
Thanks for the input, sounds like good input. Are there any tutorials or
step by step instructions for front-end/back-end set up, and login account
setups too?
 
J

John W. Vinson

Daniel,
Thanks for the input, sounds like good input. Are there any tutorials or
step by step instructions for front-end/back-end set up, and login account
setups too?
Click to expand...

Microsoft Access 2000 Security FAQ:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/207793/en-us

Print this FAQ out. Read it, carefully.

Get a good night's sleep.

Read it carefully... again!

Follow the instructions step by step (check them off on the printout).

It's easy to do security wrong.

By contrast, splitting is dead easy: open your database. Select Tools...
Database Utilties... Database Splitter Wizard.

Access will create a new database adding _BE to the database name - this is
the "backend" containing the tables.

Put the backend on a shared folder, and give each user a copy of the frontend
(you may want to make a .mde file for efficiency and to prevent users from
messing with the design).

See Tony Toews' site http://www.granite.ab.ca/access and search for the
"database splitting" tips page.

John W. Vinson [MVP]
 
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