From: aronsson@lysator.liu.se
Date: Thu, 12 May 1994 13:01:56 +0200
Message-Id: <199405121101.NAA16912@konrad>
To: linux-postgres@native-ed.bc.ca
Reply-To: linux-postgres@native-ed.bc.ca
In-reply-to: <9405120721.AA01666@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de> (wpp@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de)
Subject: Re: user authentification

Kai wrote:

>- Add medium security authentification to postgres.  Currently,

Sounds like a good idea.

>  I want something in between, which provides both good safety
>  and is easy to install.  How about doing the same thing, that

Informix OnLine (5.0) with Star/Net additions for client-server
applications also uses a TCP port.  The call that establishes the
client-server connection must provide a user login and password.
These are the same as used by the UNIX system where the server runs.
The database server should do getpwent() and crypt() as appropriate.

The security level is equivalent to that of network login (telnet).
This means passwords are transported over the network.  Users with
higher demands on security should look for more advanced solutions.
In Informix OnLine, any UNIX user can create a new database and be its
administrator, granting rights for tables or views to specific users.

I have seen other client-server systems that try to maintain their own
list of user identities and passwords.  My experience is that it gets
too hard for each user to keep two passwords updated.  I assume all
database users would have user accounts on the server host.

It seems I will spend the summer implementing parts of SQL3 for AMOS,
which is our research prototype object-relational database system at
EDSLAB, the Dept of CS, Linkoping University.  See WWW for more info:

    http://www.lysator.liu.se:7500/dbms/Main.html

Lars Aronsson.