Distributed system and method for providing sql access to management information in a secure distributed network

Abstract

An access control database defines access rights through the use of access control objects. The access control objects include group objects, each defining a group and a set of users who are members of the group, and rule objects. A first subset of the rule objects each specify a set of the group objects, a set of the management objects, and access rights by the users who are members of the groups defined by the specified set of the group objects to the specified set of management objects. The access control server responds to the access requests from the users by granting, denying and partially granting and denying the access requested in each access request in accordance with the access rights specified in the access control database. A database management system receives management information from the network and stores that information in a set of database tables. A database access privileges module stores table access rights information corresponding to at least a subset of the access rights stored in access control database. A database access engine receives user requests for management information stored in the database tables. It limits user access to the management information stored in the database tables in accordance with the table access rights information stored in the database access privileges module.