Authorization Scheme -- Best Practices?

Question

Hi All --
We have a reporting application containing approximately 300 pages and 60 or so menu items all using authorization schemes (exists SQL method) as a means to determine whether or not a use can see the menu items and/or access the pages. We've been seeing an issue where a user logging into the application experiences poor performance upon login and have traced it to our access checks and the number of "exists" queries run when a user logs in and before our menu is displayed.
What would be considered best practice in a case such as this? Does anyone have any ideas on how to increase the performance on these authorizaton checks?
Thanks,
Leigh Johnson
Fastenal Company

Answer 1

Leigh - No, the asktom post Joel referred to is posted above: http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:62048567543425
We just want to know if this post if from you folks or not.
About the authorization schemes for each page, I would think that whatever scheme you code to authorize a link to a page, e.g., on a menu, would be the same scheme you'd want to attach to the page itself.
So the authorization has to take place first at the point you render (or suppress) a link to a page and again at the point the page is requested (the latter being necessary because a user can bypass the menu links and try to access pages directly by entering the page ID in the URL.
So again, if you have X links on the menu page, each requiring a distinct query for authorization, you'll have to pay the price to do all that authorization once per session because of the design of the menu page. More precisely, the authorization scheme code, e.g., their EXISTS queries, have to be executed once per session per resource access attempted. For performance purposes, the results of these checks are cached for the duration of the session (because you set them up to be evaluated once per session and not on every page view).
One thing that might help you is region caching (or page caching) for the menu. You'd use the Cache By User option, of course. Then if the same named user logged in and out numerous times during the "cache valid" period, which is adjustable, the user would see the cached menu "instantly". Authorization checks will not have been performed during these page requests however, so you'd want to be sure that it makes sense to present cached versions of these links. However, the corresponding authorization schemes that you'd attach to the pages themselves would be evaluated when the user clicked on a "cached" link, so you'll get the protection you need, ultimately.
Scott