Security Implications of the Choice of Distributed Database Management System Model: Relational Vs. Object-Oriented

Exploring the Security Implications of Distributed Database Management Systems

Abstract

Security concerns must be addressed when developing adistributed database. When choosing between the object-oriented model and therelational model, many factors should be considered. The most important ofthese factors are single level and multilevel access controls, protectionagainst inference, and maintenance of integrity. When determining whichdistributed database model will be more secure for a particular application,the decision should not be made purely on the basis of available securityfeatures. One should also question the efficacy and efficiency of the deliveryof these features. Do the features provided by the database model provideadequate security for the intended application? Does the implementation of thesecurity controls add an unacceptable amount of computational overhead? In thispaper, the security strengths and weaknesses of both database models and thespecial problems found in the distributed environment are discussed.