Operating systems and database security

Each operating system provides security measures that you can use to protect your database.

You might want to allow access to the database from within an ABL session, but not from the operating system command level. On UNIX, you can use the operating system permissions to define security for the application database file.

Protecting the application database file using operating system permissions prevents users from accessing the database outside of ABL, or with CONNECT statements from an ABL session, but it does not prevent anyone from starting single-user or multi-user ABL sessions. It also does not prevent anyone from accessing the database through a server.

To protect the database file with operating system permissions, create the database under a particular user ID. Change the permission of the database table by entering the following UNIX command:

This permission ensures that only the owner of the database file can access the file directly.