Subject: Re: System catalog table privileges
From: Scott Marlowe <smarlowe@g2switchworks.com>
To: Hilary Forbes <hforbes@dmr.co.uk>
Cc: Aaron Bono <postgresql@aranya.com>, pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
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Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:27:04 -0500

On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 11:19, Hilary Forbes wrote:
> Aaron
> 
> Thanks for this one - I had actually wondered about doing that but the
> trouble is that they say that they need up to the minute reports not
> "as of last night".  Indeed, I do have another app where I do just
> that because I find that reports indexes/requirements are very
> different to transactional type requirements.  However, you have made
> me make up my mind to see if I can persuade them to work on data that
> is a day old.
> 
> What we really need is a good graphical (Windows based) query/report
> tool that allows us to configure the tables to be viewed etc etc and,
> most importantly, is license free.  There's fame for someone
> there....  

A couple of points.

1:  You can still use a slave server, just look into slony.  It's what
we use, and it's quite reassuring to know that I can let Joe Sixpack
loose with a query editor and not worry about him killing my main
production database.

2:  If you HAVE to let an untrusted user have access to your real
database, then make them use views, and place some kind of limit in the
view that keeps them from blowing things up with really ugly queries. 
That won't stop a truly determined person from DOSing your server, but
will help.

3:  Look at pentaho.  It's got a standalone java version that will do a
lot in the graphical (windowsish) realm.