Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 5th Edition

Security Overview

Oracle security topics fall into three general categories:

• Those that are exclusively in the DBA, system administrator, and network administrator domains. Topics in this category—for example, user and privilege management—are beyond the scope of this book.

• Those that are important to developers and application architects and that are not necessarily the responsibility of the DBA. One example is the issue of selecting invoker rights versus definer rights while creating stored code; this choice is typically made during the application design phase itself by the developer, not by the DBA. Topics in this category are covered elsewhere in this book; for example, the topic of rights is covered in Chapter 24.

• Those that are generally considered DBA topics but that developers and application architects need to know about and from which they can derive a good deal of unconventional value. These include encryption, row-level security (RLS), application contexts, and fine-grained auditing (FGA). These topics are the subject of this chapter.

How can the features and tools described in this chapter help PL/SQL developers and application architects? Let’s answer that question by looking at each topic in turn:

Encryption

The answer here is obvious: encryption is vitally important to data protection and is actively applied in many application design situations. You need a working knowledge of the Oracle features and tools available to perform encryption, including Transparent Data Encryption ...