Hiding the Database

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Hiding the Database

Satish-463129

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Points: 71
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February 1, 2010 at 10:12 pm

#137804

Hello,
The application was developed in .NET and SQL 2005. Originally, we'd thought that it'd be a web-based application (i.e. the SQL database will be hosted by us and users can connect to it).
But some clients want the database to be hosted on their computer itself. Of course the application needs the database to run, however, by putting the database on the client's machine we will lose control of our data.
I cannot find an easy way that SQL provides to allow only the application to access the data, but not humans.
Nothing is altered in the database--we are simply reading data from the SQL table, so should we explore other things (indexed flat files?) to make this into a software product without losing control over the data? The Database size is around 30GB.

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Lowell SSC Guru Points: 323546 More actions · Answer 1

not enough info i think Satish; still a lot of variables out there;

your database is 30 gig, but if i were a client of yours, how much of that data is really mine and related to me? probably a very small portion, I'd guess, so you might consider giving them a stripped down version of the database with just their data; then they can host it on their own SQL server with no real coding required as far as changing over to some other db replacement system.

Lowell

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Satish-463129 Valued Member Points: 71 More actions · Answer 2

Lowell, its a product. depending upon the client's day to day need, any section of the data might be releavant as its zipcode profiles. So we can't give certain amount of data to client.

Lowell SSC Guru Points: 323546 More actions · Answer 3

ahh gotcha Satish; a zip+4 database is a little different. i think the issue becomes "that's my proprietary data" that if someone cloned, they could build their own app for cleaning addresses without you, and stuff like that. Now I understand the hesitancy of letting it host elsewhere.

I assume there's performance problems at the remote sites? your sure it's network latency and not performance of the application, i assume?

so the core issue is your need to improve performance, and the client want's to do that by local hosting. switching to another db system in the hopes of obfuscating the data is going to slow things down and add additional complexity.

can you host another SQL Server that is much much closer to your client that is having trouble? that would be the first thing i'd try;

Lowell

--help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

Joie Andrew One Orange Chip Points: 27361 More actions · Answer 4

What about using replication? You can install SQL Express on their machine and setup transactional replication making the machine a subscriber. They would have a read-only copy of the database which would be updated at the publisher, and replication would ensure they are in sync.

Of course, they would need to be connected all of the time. If they are not always connected to the network, such as if they were using laptops off of the network, then it sounds like merge replication is better suited for what you need.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152531(SQL.90).aspx

Joie Andrew
"Since 1982"