Types of Users- Users and Basic Security
There are a few types of users for the Oracle Database. We have already mentioned a few of them that were needed to install the software and create the database.
Depending on the size of the environment and how many people are available to manage the environment, there might be the same person in each of these roles. However, for security policies and separation of duties for large enterprises, tasks and access are divided up into different roles to manage the security and tasks of the databases.
Here is a list of typical Oracle Database users:
• Database administrators
• Security officers
• Network administrators
• Application developers
• Application administrators
• Database users
Database administration is typically performed by a group of database administrators (DBAs), and they have the responsibility of installing and upgrading the Oracle Database server and tools. DBAs manage the storage and storage structures for the database based on application designs. Backup and recovery operations are in the hands of the DBAs along with creating and managing objects. These are typical tasks for system DBAs, and there can be shared responsibilities of DBAs and application administrators or applications DBAs.
Security officers add users and access to the database. They are responsible for managing and monitoring access to the database and maintaining the system’s security. There are security policies that can be implemented so that the creation of users is performed by the security team and not the DBAs.
Network administrators for the database manage the Oracle networking products such as database listeners and Oracle Net Services. This is not a typical network administrator, but here they manage the encryption in transit with sqlnet.ora settings and listener.ora values, and they verify that new databases are added to listeners and tnsnames.ora files. This is typically done by DBAs, but it is possible to separate this role.
Application developers design and implement database applications. They design the database objects and tune the application during development. As they work in the database, they work with the DBAs to ensure the database configurations are designed for the applications and that storage and other resources are available. With 23c, there is even a new role called DB_DEVELOPER_ROLE to provide the needed access for database developers.
Application administrators might be more responsible for the design and resources for the application than actually coding and developing the application. This role can even be described more as an application DBA, who helps manage all of the resources of the database, creates objects, and verifies performance and configurations.
Database users interact with the database through applications or database tools. Direct access to the database is not necessarily typical. However, there are reasons to have database access and users for tables and data that is available. There are tools to load data and perform analytics and queries on data that database users would use. Other typical ways of getting to the data are to use APIs or database applications.
Most of these types of users have database accounts to log into the database, but they don’t need to execute operating system commands. OS-level accounts for Oracle are used as the database software is installed and the database created, and normally they are limited to these administrators. Different operating system accounts can be used, but the correct access to the database files and database storage is needed to perform administration tasks. Users accessing the database do not need operating system access.
