Cyteen02 writes "We run a data processing and radar visual tracking station station system for a customer in the UK. We provide a simple Web site where the customer can display the tower data held in our Oracle database. From these screens they can query based on a compound of 15 different data fields, so it's pretty flexible. We also provide a csv report overnight of the previous day's data processing, which they can load into their own SQL Server database and produce in general reports they want. Occasionally they also want one-off particular blow-by-blow reports, so we write the SQL for that and send them the results in an Excel format spreadsheet. This all ticks along happily. However they have now asked for direct read-only access to our Oracle database, to be able to run ad-hoc queries without consulting us. As a DBA, my heart sinks at the thought of amateurs pawing through my database. Unfortunately, 'because you are stupid' is not considered a valid business reason to reject their request. So can any Slashdotters assist me in hut my case to restrict access? Have you old a similar situation? Have you had to support this sort of end user access? How would you advice me to keep my customer away from my treasured tables?"

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Mark