Monday, March 26, 2012

Hide an ODBC connection?

We've purchased a 3rd party app that uses an Access db linked to SQL Server. Unfortunately, we've come to discover that a user of ours seems to know access and has decided to take report writing into their own hands.
We have the app and the access db on a server and a mapped a drive for each user.

Unfortunately, I can't lock down the ODBC connection because that would lock it down in the app. Someone suggested using a File DSN and removing the System DSN's off all users machines. I'm not too familiar with File DSN's and wanted to know if this would prevent users from creating their own Access mdb's linked to my server or not.

Any idea's are greatly appreciated.Dude,

Bad news :( - unless you can stop the end user from hacking the registry and prevent access to the odbcad32 (which you really can't lock out and have the machine access the server) there isn't much you can do AFAIK.

You didn't mention what OS's are in play. If you are a Win2k/WinXP shop you may be able to build a policy that limits the user from adding a new DSN, but I doubt even a file DSN will really stop him. If you go look in C:\Program Files\Common Files\ODBC\Data Sources All they really do is point to the system DSN. And he'll be able to pick it in Access.|||I figured the answer would go something like that.
Thank you anyways.

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