Securing a database questions

[alan fisher]

I need to secure a couple of databases and am doing as
much research as possible before hand. I have a few
questions I can't seem to get a good answer to from the
books. My situation is I have 4 front ends with links to
three different back ends. All are Access 2K.

1. Do I have to combine front and back end before securing
or can I create a single workgroup and add all the front
and back ends?

2. Will there be any issues when newly aquired computers
ship with XP?

3. Will users with their own databases have to open them
with a special shortcut pointing to the system.mdw on
their hard drive?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Lynn Trapp]

1. Do I have to combine front and back end before securing

or can I create a single workgroup and add all the front
and back ends?

You can secure all frontends and backends with the same workgroup
information file.

2. Will there be any issues when newly aquired computers
ship with XP?

Not likely

3. Will users with their own databases have to open them
with a special shortcut pointing to the system.mdw on
their hard drive?

Use the workgroup administrator to join each user to the default system.mdw
on their hard drives. Use a special shortcut to point to the secure.mdw. The
syntax for the shortcut is:

"FullPathToMSAccess.exe" "FullPathToDatabase.mdb" /wrkgrp
"FullPathToSecure.mdw"

 

[Peter Miller]

1. Do I have to combine front and back end before securing
or can I create a single workgroup and add all the front
and back ends?

The latter.

2. Will there be any issues when newly aquired computers
ship with XP?

Not sure what you mean. Since you didn't mention (a) what version of
Access you're currently working with or (b) whether XP above refers to
the o/s or Access. Assuming (a) is something earlier than Access XP
(say 2000?) and (b) refers to Access, then no, there is no problem.
The same db's and workgroup will work on the latter version of Access.

3. Will users with their own databases have to open them
with a special shortcut pointing to the system.mdw on
their hard drive?

No, but users with your secured databases would use such a shortcut.
Remember that Access has a default workgroup. In general, you do not
want to have users use your secured workgroup as their default
workgroup because, while this will make distributing your apps easier,
it will make any other use of Access by your users also default to a
secured environment. A better approach is to use shortcuts with
specified workgroups - not for generic use of Access but for use of
secured databases. Sure, if someone opens your secured database(s)
without using the shortcut, they will not be able to get in, but that
should not really be a problem. People who know what they are doing
will be able to specify the secured workgroup manually, and those that
don't can always use your pre-defined shortcut(s).

HTH,

Peter Miller
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