Limiting Access to Server? 1

[AlexCuse]

Hello All,

I have an application that is to be used by my entire company. Because we didn't want to open up our department's network drives to 'outsiders' we put the database on one of our citrix boxes. I have a folder mapped to a letter drive on my PC that allows me to go in and modify the application.

I started to roll this app out for testing yesterday, and the first thing I am seeing is that it opens as read only on any machine not configured with the extra drive.

My question is, is there a way to allow users access to the drive (so they can open the application and create new records in the tables) while preventing them from having traditional windows explorer access to the box? Our citrix expert has recently left the company so any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot,

Alex

 

[patrickrouse]

Is the DB odbc compliant so users can access it via datasource and not via file share?

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com

 

[AlexCuse]

Excellent point! It is ODBC compliant although it's not currently set up that way. At the moment the front end contains all the data. It is a work order tracking app so it doesn't have all that much data to store.

There is only one table that users will write to, should I place that table in an access database on the one drive that everyone has access to (and will be able to write to) or do I need to publish the entire app from such a location?

I'd prefer not to place it on my SQL Server if at all possible, although I suppose that I could set up an additional login for users.

Thanks so much for your help!

Alex

 

[patrickrouse]

This question should be posed on a forum specific to your DB technology, i.e. Access. With Access you can have a frontend-backend setup, where the users don't know where the backend is.

This is not a Citrix or Terminal Server problem, but a database design issue.

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com

 

[AlexCuse]

I just wanted to be sure that it would work correctly when published through Citrix. I will try relocating the back end to another location and see how that works, and if it doesn't I'll just throw it up on SQL. Thanks for your help.

Alex

 

[patrickrouse]

Is it currently in Access? If not, what are you using? Access works fine over Citrix, basically you publish the path to the msaccess.exe followed by the path to the front-end DB.

Patrick Rouse
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

http://www.sessioncomputing.com

 

[AlexCuse]

It is in Access. I set up a separate back end in Access containing just the table that I want people to write to. I placed this on a separate drive that everyone has access to, and then used linked tables instead of ODBC because I couldn't use ODBC from Access to Access. Everyone can get in now and write to the appropriate table, but we still get the read only error.

I am trying to find a way to run something pre-startup to disable the error message but not having much luck with it so far. All the typical methods don't work.

Thanks for your advice, I get the DUH award for not thinking of it!