Security problem (1 Viewer)

[rothjm]

I am a network administrator at a Hospital.
An EMS guy created a database to track all the Ambulance calls.
He made it a multi-user database.
The database resides on my network with all the users having the same permissions (Windows 2000 server and workstations).
When one specific user is in the database no one else can access the database.
It gives the Error: Could not use 'Admin'; file already in use.
If she is not in the database (she is not the creator) anyone else can access it, multi-users. There is no security built into the database. They don't have an access workgroup defined or anything. The creator swears it is not his database and it is something network related.....I tell him everyone has the same permissions (rights) to the directory.
He is using Default Open: Shared; and Default Record Locking: No Locks. He has the checkbox selected: open database with record level locking.

I have some Access experience but mostly with SQL backend....letting SQL take care of Security & locking.

Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks for the assistance.
Jeff

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Your problem user has not joined the workgroup.

If there IS no workgroup then someone is not telling the entire truth about sharing. OR everyone EXCEPT your problem user has an icon with a non-trivial set of command line options associated with opening this database.

In workgroup security, everyone has rights according to the setup of the User and Group Security menu dialog box. In particular, one of the Workgroup Options is OpenExclusive. If everyone were in a workgroup, you could fix it so that everyone would do an open only in non-exclusive mode. Then you would avoid the exclusivity problem.

Basically, when a person not joined to the workgroup opens the database and they have a workgroup file on their machine (which they probably do if they have a local copy of Access), then they are Admin account on that (default) workgroup file.

The correct way to share this IS the problem of the guy whose database it is. His security design is deficient. You may show this to him provided he isn't the type to go ballistic and stalk me for the rest of my life. Proper design of a multi-user database should ALWAYS include attention to security.