March 7, 2005 at 11:28 am
We have purchased a workflow software package and the software has an administrator tool for building forms and workflows. The administrator function uses an account that must be granted dbo access. We have our database hosted in a shared sql server hosting environment and the vendor for this environment is saying it is bad practice to allow an application id dbo access, and wants to disallow this. We have argued that this does not impact other databases - only our own - but are not getting agreement. My question is whether this sounds like a valid concern - and therefore this application is poorly designed - or whether the hosting vendor is being overly conservative. I am not a SQL dba, but can understand why dbo rights are needed - and it seems to me that designing the application differently could overly complicate things. The hosting vendor cannot explicitly say what might be so dangerous to others on the shared box, by allowing this. I am looking for some ammunition to argue the point that we should be allowed this access - any examples, etc - unless they are right!
March 7, 2005 at 11:46 am
The vendor is correct that practice of giving an application dbo access is not a great idea. However, it is not unheard of in many "Packaged Solutions" software. In my 6 years of experience I have seen this requirement on a number of programs including some notable ones such as PeopleSoft and a number of CRM programs. I would be more concerned if dbo needed to be granted to a specific user, such as an nt login. That brings human error into the equation, however if the only contact the dbo user will have to the database is through the application itself I would not consider it to be an extreme risk. A good point however is you are the business client. Even in the company I work for if software was purchased and required this access I could argue all I want but at the end of the day it is a business decision. I am there to support the business even if I do not agree. If something went wrong I would always have the pleasure of saying I told you so.
March 8, 2005 at 10:34 am
I don't think the hosting provider is being overly conservative. They are just trying to implement a best practice, if at all possible. However, if it's not do-able, it's not do-able.
That being said... a lot of application docs say dbo rights are necessary but after doing a little investigation with the application it turns out they aren't. The application vendor either didn't have the staff to identify what was actually needed or didn't want to spend the resources to formally secure the database and document the minimums. However, as a customer the problem you probably face is if you want support and the app doesn't have dbo access, the vendor won't come to the table.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
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