Permissions

Three Reasons to Use a Custom Database Role

Ever had a situation where a small in-house application written for a small group of employees needed some permissions in the database? How do you handle that? I want to walk through the scenario and provide three reasons that using a Database Role might be the answer you are looking for.

Let’s first cover, at a high level, the different levels of permissions in SQL Server and the associated commands. In SQL Server there are Server level permissions for the SQL instance and there are database level permissions. Within the database level there are also specific permissions for objects like tables, views and store procedures. There are also database permissions that can be grouped together in a database role. In fact, there are some built-in database roles for SQL Server as shown below. If you aren’t familiar with these, you can find out about them here.

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Three Reasons to Use Windows Groups to Manage SQL Server

Ever come across a SQL Server that had 5, 10, or more individual logins for users in it? I have a few times and it made me wonder if whoever had done such a thing realized how much harder they were making the administration of the server by doing this. I suppose some folks start out with one or two people that they give special permissions or access directly to the SQL instance and underlying databases. Their logic probably goes something like, “It’s just Tommy and Suzie. Those are the only people who will need access for a long time.”

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