Question about table ownership

[Nigel Hall]

I'm setting up the first of many Informix production instances and I was
wondering what thoughts anybody who's supporting existing instances would
have on the following:

Are there any drawbacks to having all tables owned by the informix user-id?

How do you handle security? Is there anyway to grant a certain level of
security to a group of users rather than issueing individual grants on
each user-id?

I'm not sure how performance is going to look so I'm setting up rootdbs,
datadbs, logdbs and tempdbs dbspaces to start off with then I'll split out
high activity tables and indexes as the need arises. Given this should I
be trying to split off physical logs into their own dbspace? Any other
dbspace thoughts.

If I have multiple Informix instances running on the same unix box, we
have an IBM SP2 running AIX 4.1.4, are there any special considerations?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Nigel Hall
Safeway, CA, US

[Nils Myklebust]

Ni...@Hallnet.com (Nigel Hall) wrote:

:I'm setting up the first of many Informix production instances and I was

:wondering what thoughts anybody who's supporting existing instances would
:have on the following:

:Are there any drawbacks to having all tables owned by the informix user-id?

Nothing should be owned by the informix user-id.
You should set up one special user that is used to create the
database, tables and all other "objects" in it. This user should of
course be used only for dba work, not regular usage of the db.
By granting all other users only connect right (not resource) to the
db you make sure they can't create tables, indexes and other objects
and make administration simpler.

The informix user should be reserved for what it is, a type of
superuser with rights above and beyond that of any dba.

:How do you handle security? Is there anyway to grant a certain level of

:security to a group of users rather than issueing individual grants on
:each user-id?

Check out roles.

:I'm not sure how performance is going to look so I'm setting up rootdbs,

:datadbs, logdbs and tempdbs dbspaces to start off with then I'll split out
:high activity tables and indexes as the need arises. Given this should I
:be trying to split off physical logs into their own dbspace? Any other
:dbspace thoughts.

As long as the dbspaces are on different disks this all sounds fine.
If two or more of these dbspaces are placed on the same disk it
doesn't make much sense to split them.

:If I have multiple Informix instances running on the same unix box, we

:have an IBM SP2 running AIX 4.1.4, are there any special considerations?

Don't know

:Any thoughts would be appreciated.

:Nigel Hall
:Safeway, CA, US

Nils.My...@idg.no
NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway
My opinions are those of my company
The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org

[KENDRICK...@heb.com]

You did not include what level of Informix you are using, if you are using
Informix 7 look into using ROLES. As far as who is the owner. I found having
an SPECIFIC id easier to use. I know whom actually built that table. I had my
administrator create me a specific id just for DBA. You must know that ONLY
the owner of a table can REVOKE an USER from the table. If you have DBA
auority and do not own the table then you can not revoke an user's
authorization on that table. If you know you are the ONLY one who going to be
using the INFORMIX id then having INFORMIX as the owner may not be a problem.

Hope this helps!

C.L. Kendricks