Virtual Private Database (VPD) on Oracle 11g Release 2 and Microsoft SQL 2008

Introduction

Human world is becoming more and more dependent on computers and information technology (IT). The autonomic capabilities in computers and IT have become the need of the day. These capabilities in software and systems increase performance, accuracy, availability and reliability with less or no human intervention (HI). Database has become the integral part of information system in most of the organizations. Databases are growing with respect to size, functionality, heterogeneity and due to this their manageability needs more attention. Virtual Private Database (VPD) is also identified as Fine Grained Access Control (FGAC) or Row-level Security (RLS). It provides added security capabilities to the Oracle 11g database by masking data so that users only see their privileged information. Data for separate sites, departments and individuals can be stored together in a single database without the knowledge of the users. VPD works by transparently modifying requests for data to present a partial view of the tables to users based on a set of defined criteria. During runtime, predicates are appended to all queries to filter rows the user is not supposed to see. VPD plays a crucial role in Database Security. This paper discuss which implementation (Oracle or Microsoft) is more practical in an Enterprise IT Environment (large IT environments that security play a crucial role) (Technical Comparison of Oracle Database 11g versus SQL Server 2008, pp.123).

Discussion and Analysis

Virtual Private Database (VPD), a feature of Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition, was launched in Oracle 8i and is one of the most popular security features in the database. VPD is employed when the standard object privileges and related database roles are insufficient to meet application security requirements. VPD policies can be simple or complex depending on your security requirements. VPD in the context with Oracle 11g exhibiting self-managing behavior in its different components and tools. The self-managing behavior is depicted through the discussion about the internal functionality and working of these autonomic components. This research identifies the areas in which Oracle 11g DBMS should further improve so that the development of Oracle 11g release 2 databases can be made possible from the current state of partial autonomic DBMS. Moreover, ours work is different from prior work by identifying the optional and mandatory human intervention of VPD in Oracle's 11g database and making a comparison with autonomic components and tools of Microsoft SQL ...