I'm starting to ponder security models for Nimbus. Perhaps drizzle is
happy with a basic model, but a discussion is probably well worth having.
The basic problem is that the standard SQL security is rather dated --
designed for interactive time sharing but deployed in a world dominated
by application servers. Application servers:
* Need to connect to database to identify and authenticate their client
* Serve a wide range of clients ranging from the system
manager/DBA/god (or even Sheeri).
* Need to block unauthorized updates and filter content as
appropriate to individual clients
* Provide a mechanism to track access and security violations
Verizon can fire employee-snoopers
Netfrastructure (present but dormant in Falcon) has a flexible role
model (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun) in which privileges are
assigned to roles, arbitrary sets of roles (some active, some dormant)
associated with accounts, application can activate/deactivate roles
within a session, and access control determined by roles active.
Layered on on of this are "filtersets" -- a named collection of <table,
boolean> pairs:
create filterset <name> ( <table> : <boolean> [, ...])
When a table referenced by an active filter set is compiled, the
associated boolean is added as a conjunct to the selection expression
(this is applied recursively, so if one filterset boolean references
another table, that table's boolean gets tossed into the brew as well).
Filterset booleans often contain the relational expression:
<role name> IS ACTIVE
have access to session variables, and can reference the table in question.
So here some are questions that I am considering:
* Is there a better way for a client to authenticate itself than
account/password?
* Are there other (or better) security models that the flexible role
model?
* How should access and security logging interact with the rest of
the system?
* What other declarative mechanisms in the database reduce the
complexity and cost of applications?
* Is adaptive security a concept that would be useful in the
database context?
* What else have we missed?
Any ideas or thought? Even if they don't fit in drizzle, there's always
Downpour.
--
Jim Starkey
President, NimbusDB, Inc.
978 526-1376
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