User manual

Chapter 5
Protecting databases with accounts and privilege sets
This chapter describes the basics of how to use accounts and privilege
sets to restrict what users can see and do in a FileMaker Pro file.
You’ll learn about:
1 planning security for a file
1 viewing and creating user accounts and passwords
1 viewing and creating privilege sets
1 viewing extended privileges
Although your operating system includes file security features, you
should use FileMaker Pro access privileges as the fundamental way to
control access to and protect the security of your database files.
The security features have been substantially revised since FileMaker
Pro
6. For information about how security settings in older databases
convert to the current version of FileMaker Pro, see
“Converting
FileMaker databases from previous versions” on page 101.
Note See Help for detailed, comprehensive information and step-by-
step procedures about using FileMaker Pro.
Protecting databases
You can limit what users can see and do in a database file. You can
restrict:
1 Data access. Make particular records or fields from individual
tables view-only, or hide them completely.
1 Layout access. Prevent users from modifying layouts in Layout
mode.
1 Access to value lists and scripts. Prevent users from accessing and
modifying value lists and scripts, and from running scripts.
1 Access to file sharing. Individually enable file sharing via the
FileMaker Network, Web Publishing, and ODBC and JDBC.
1 Outputting data. Prevent users from printing or exporting data.
1 Menu access. Make only a limited set of menu commands
available.
You restrict what users do in a file by requiring them to enter an
account name and password when they attempt to open a file. The
account name and password they enter determines which privilege set
will be used. The privilege set limits what they can do in a file. For
more information about accounts and privilege sets, see the following
section.
You can define privileges in a shared file while clients are using it. (In
FileMaker Pro 6 and earlier, all clients had to close the shared file
before you could make changes to privileges.) Any privilege changes
that affect a current client do not take effect until the client closes and
reopens the file.
The privileges that you set up apply to a single file only and all
database tables within that file. If your database solution consists of
multiple files that you want to protect, you may want to combine all
of these files into one multi-table file. Then you can define privileges
in only a single file to manage access to the entire database solution.
If you don’t want to combine the files into one file, then you should
define privileges in each file that contains items you want to protect.
Important If you create a relationship in one file that references a table
in another file, you cannot manage access privileges for the related
table in the first file. The privileges defined in the other file control
access to that table.