Re: Connecting by data source?

[Brian Jepson <bjepson home com>]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Stephan Heinze wrote:

> Q: can we have a look before you publish?

Definitely - I'll make it available soon, and I'll post the URL.  Will PDF
and PS format be OK?  I'm editing it in Star Office, and I massage it in
MS-Word before I send it to my publisher or generate a PDF.

> > that way, I can worry about database, user id, password, and provider in
> > ~/.gnome/gdalib instead of on the command line.
> 
> IMHO datasources shouldn't depend on user id and password.
> 
> if i have an oracle-instance (datasource) there can be more than one
> user.

Aren't datasources flexible enough to be very general (specify only a
given server) and very specific (specify a user, server, database,
language, etc.)?  Looking at the current implementation, it looks like
users can decide how they want to use the datasource feature.

Since my gdalib file is in /home/bjepson/.gnome, I think it should be
acceptable for me to put some user-specific datasources in that file.

> 
> ...and storing passwords... you know what i mean?
> 

You're right - in most cases, storing passwords can be a problem.  In
practice, people put passwords in .netrc and .fetchmailrc (and are warned
about setting appropriate permissions).  I feel that it should be up to
each individual site to develop policies about these files, depending on
how sensitive their data is.  People shouldn't store passwords without
giving it some thought (by the same logic, they also shouldn't run rolodex
without -p, since you can see the password with ps).

Even forgetting about the passwords, a data source can still wrap up
useful information like host name, user name, database, etc.  So, if I've
set up a datasource in my home directory that specifies a database server,
a database within that server, and my username, is it possible to write a
program that lets me supply the password at runtime and use the datasource
as an index into that other useful information?

Thanks,

Brian Jepson * (bjepson@ids.net)  * http://users.ids.net/~bjepson