Web Databases: Fun with Guests or Risky Business?
By Ken North
This month's column explores two topics of great importance: database security and mission-critical databases. Database security has always been a topic to be taken seriously, but exposing your data to the Internet and its hacker subculture increases the threat level. Selecting the wrong DBMS software for managing mission-critical data also increases your exposure. However, awareness of external security threats seems to be much greater than concerns about using a database manager that could put mission-critical data at risk from those threats. The possibility of online analytical processing (OLAP) becoming as widespread as transaction processing (see the text box titled "
Microsoft, OLAP, and the Web: An Insider's View") heightens concerns about data at risk, because OLAP programs use valuable, sensitive data.
Mission-Critical Databases
Not all products marketed as database managers are suitable for managing mission-critical databases. A database is mission critical if its lack of data integrity has serious consequences, such as causing the loss of customers or even lives. A chamber of commerce's calendar of local events is not mission-critical data. Pharmacy orders in a hospital are mission critical because lives are at stake. A travel agency or bookseller may find that going out of business is the price paid for losing data.
