How security of the systems might be improved using database procedures?
- by Centurion
The usage of Oracle PL/SQL procedures for controlling access to data often emphasized in PL/SQL books and other sources as being more secure approach. I'v seen several systems where all business logic related with data is performed through packages, procedures and functions, so application code becomes quite "dumb" and is only responsible for visualization part. I even heard some devs call such approaches and driving architects as database nazi :) because all logic code resides in database. I do know about DB procedure performance benefits, but now I'm interested in a "better security" when using thick client model. I assume such design mostly used when Oracle (and maybe MS SQL Server) databases are used.
I do agree such approach improves security but only if there are not much users and every system user has a database account, so we might control and monitor data access through standard database user security. However, how such approach could increase the security for an average web system where thick clients are used: for example one database user with DML grants on all tables, and other users are handled using "users" and"user_rights" tables? We could use DB procedures, save usernames into context use that for filtering but vulnerability resides at the root - if the main database account is compromised than nothing will help. Of course in a real system we might consider at least several main users (for example frontend_db_user, backend_db_user).
