Re: [Gnue-dev] Appserver/Common Issues

[Stanley A. Klein]

At 03:12 PM 11/22/2002 +0100, Reinhard Mueller wrote:
>Hello, Stan,
>
>Am Mit, 2002-11-20 um 22.51 schrieb Stanley A. Klein:
>> Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.  For your example you would have two
>> gfd files, one for those who are allowed access to the prices and one for
>> those who are not allowed access to the prices.  If the various other parts
>> of the form are the same for both users, the non-price parts could be in
>> one file for inclusion and the price display part in another file.  Then,
>> the two gfd files would be made up by "including" the non-price part in one
>> and the price and non-price parts in the other.  
>
>I think that I understood this. However, the issue I see here is the
>following:
>
>Consider we have the "final" GNUe Application, where we have about 20
>forms and 50 reports showing the purchase price. I install that to a
>customer and the customer tells me to make purchase prices invisible to
>certain users. So i would have to change 20 GFD's and 50 GRD's.
>The next update then would probably break it again.


Reinhard -

I see the issue you are raising.  I took it to use as one of the examples
in the document I'm writing (which I hope to finish the current revision of
soon).  :-)

If the number of gfd's and grd's is limited, the strategy I described would
work.  For a lot of gfd's and grd's you are right that we would need to do
something else.

I think there are some database systems that provide access control by
field.  If such a database system is available, I would recommend using it
to provide control of the price field. The implication for GNUe and
appserver is that the field would need to be traceable from the client side
through appserver to the database side.  I don't think that was guaranteed
in the old GEAS.  I hope it can be provided in appserver.

Otherwise, the only way to provide the control is to do it by GNUe
functionality, recognizing (and telling prospective users) that the
security assurance of such an approach is likely to be less than in other
approaches.


Stan Klein