prohibit access to a database.

[Loui Mercieca]

Hi,

I am designing a Point Of Sale system, but facing a problem. By design, the
database must be located locally. However, i don't want any user to just
open the database and view all the records. Is there a way to prevent any
user from opening the db, but still allow my program to access it. So far
the solutions i thought of are:

1) Mark the db file as hidden but that would stop only the unskilled users .
2) Encrypt every record, that way even if the user sees the database, it
would still be unreadable. However, to make matters worse, the client wants
to be able to make reports on the database, and encryted data is not much of
useful.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 1 more point. I am on a very tight
budget, so i cannot use expensive 3rd party tools.

 

[Octavio Hernandez]

Loui,

¿What is your database? ¿MSDE (SQL Server)?
If so, you can design a set of permissions so that only you and those you
want can access the DB or the parts of DB you want them to allow access to.
And for your application to work, you can use an APPLICATION ROLE. There is
plenty of information on such topics on MSDN.

Regards - Octavio

 

[Loui Mercieca]

Thanks octavio, yes i tried it out and it worked.

However, just for options sake for the client, can i do something like that
using access??

Thanks once again for your help!!