Database Read Only Access

A separate division in our company is asking for 'read only access' to one of our databases. First of all I am not sure what that means. Second, I don't know what, if any, are the drawbacks to doing that.

Any insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks.

What type of DBMS? Since you posted this in VB .Net forum I guess you will be writing a program to interact with the database, so If you don't write to the database, then you have a read only system. but I'm sure you know that, so I'm not sure what your asking.

"Read-only access" means access to the data for reading purposes but no ability to write. For a database, that means your can execute a SELECT but not an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE. That is something you can do at the server level when using systems like SQL Server but, in that case, it's really nothing to do with VB.NET. If your question actually does involve VB.NET then it's a case of writing an appropriate If statement to determine whether the current user has read-only or read/write access and allowing or disallowing specific functionality based on that.

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Originally Posted by jmcilhinney

"Read-only access" means access to the data for reading purposes but no ability to write. For a database, that means your can execute a SELECT but not an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE. That is something you can do at the server level when using systems like SQL Server but, in that case, it's really nothing to do with VB.NET. If your question actually does involve VB.NET then it's a case of writing an appropriate If statement to determine whether the current user has read-only or read/write access and allowing or disallowing specific functionality based on that.

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Thanks. I have an API that provides access but for political reasons I hear things like, give me a read only connection string.

I am looking for reasons to force the use of the API . All I have so far is that if I make a change to the DB I have to get permission from the outside group instead of just changing the API. One of the changes I was contemplating was the encryption of a string field. The API masks the change.

I have no reason to trust this other group, a lot of bad history.

I found this, it might help you out.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...on-to-readonly

The best way to grant read only is to add those users to create a role that has select only privileges and then add those users to that role. Then they can't do anything but select statements.

-tg