Security

Technical Article

Managing the "Surface Area" of SQL Server 2005

  • Article

As every developer knows by now, Microsoft has focused renewed attention on security in recent product releases. One of the important concepts in this effort is surface area. Roughly speaking, a piece of software has a smaller surface area if there are fewer ways to attack it: fewer open ports, fewer APIs, fewer protocols, and so on. OSQL Server 2005 takes this concept to the next level by letting you explicitly manage the software's surface area.

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2005-04-21

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Technical Article

SQL Server 2005 Security - Part 4

  • Article

In this article, we will conclude our coverage of security related changes in SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 (although we will continue discussion of improvements in other functionality areas throughout the reminder of this series). The topics we will focus on here are code and module signing, modifications of SQL Server Agent and SQL Profiler operations, as well as monitoring and auditing changes.

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2005-03-23

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Technical Article

SQL Server 2000 Security - Part 6 - Ownership and Object Permissions

  • Article

We have described, so far, authorization based on a predefined fixed server (determining a set of SQL server-wide privileges) and database (applying to database objects and activities) roles. We have also discussed application roles, which makes the level of permissions independent of those assigned to a SQL Server login or a database user account. Now it is time to look into permissions from the point of view of database objects. There are two main factors that play a role in determining how access rights to them are evaluated - their ownership and custom permissions. We will discuss the first one of these topics in this article and will continue with the other one in the next installment of this series.

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2005-03-22

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SQLServerCentral Article

Securing SQL Backups

  • Article

SQL Server does many things very well, but securing itself is not one of them. While securing your server requires some effort, there is an area that many people forget. Securing your backups! Brian Kelley, our resident security expert, brings some advice and ideas for ensuring your data will not be stolen.

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2005-03-21

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Technical Article

SQL Server 2005 Security - Part 3 Encryption

  • Article

After discussing authentication and authorization behavior of SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 in the previous two articles of this series, it is time to look into other security-related changes. In particular, we will focus on the freshly introduced native database encryption capabilities. While some encryption functionality existed in the previous versions (e.g. involving column encryption APIs within User Defined Functions or PWDENCRYPT password one-way hash function), it was relatively limited and rarely used. SQL Server 2005 provides significant improvements in this area.

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2005-03-09

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Using CHOOSE()

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Question of the Day

Using CHOOSE()

We have this code that sets some status values and then queries them using the CHOOSE() function in SQL Server 2025.

CREATE TABLE Status
(
    StatusID INT,
    StatusDescription VARCHAR(20)
);
GO
INSERT dbo.Status
(
    StatusID,
    StatusDescription
)
VALUES
(0, 'Uncategorized'),
(1, 'Active'),
(2, 'Inactive'),
(3, 'Temp');

GO
SELECT CHOOSE(StatusID, 'Unknown', 'Active', 'Inactive', 'Temporary')
FROM Status;
When the SELECT runs, what is returned?

See possible answers