Discretionary access control in a heterogeneous distributed data base management system

Thesis/Dissertation · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1986

OSTI ID:6917649

Wang, C Y

An important technical problem in building a distributed database management system (DDBMS) is access control which prevents unauthorized access or malicious destruction of a database. Consider a DDBMS that uses a uniform global data model to integrate the local schemes of existing DBMSs at the sites of a network. The local DBMSs are unchanged, and the DDBMS is implemented as a module on top of the existing DBMSs at each site. The DBMS at each site is expected to retain its autonomy. That is, the local DBMS at each site maintains control of the data stored at that site. Each local DBMS decides for itself if a user (of the local DBMS or of the DDBMS) may access the data it manages. The design of the access control system for the database in such an environment presents several problems. First, the DBMSs at different sites may have different and incompatible access control mechanisms. Second, queries involving data from multiple sites must be processed by the access control mechanisms of multiple and possible different local DBMSs. Coordinating the access control mechanisms of these DBMSs to provide a consistent access control facility to the users of the heterogeneous DDBMS is a difficult task. This research discusses the problem described above. A general architecture for a DDBMS was developed. Data abstraction techniques were adapted to specify the architecture. A formal verification for the specification was completed.

• Research Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6917649
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990210 -- Supercomputers-- (1987-1989)
990300* -- Information Handling
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS
CONTROL SYSTEMS
DATA BASE MANAGEMENT
DATA PROCESSING
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
MANAGEMENT
PROCESSING