Using Oracle 11gR1 OID to control access to 11gR2 RAC database ?

Question

I have a two 11gR2 RAC Node database that I would like to implement Oracle 11gR1 OID to manage all access to the RAC database.
Should I install and configure Oracle 11gR1 OID into the same RAC database to control access to the RAC database? Is this the appropriate approach?
Please share your ideas... I couldn't make it to Openword to ask this type of question.

Answer 1

Hi,
I think there is some confusion here. OID doesnt protect your database. All OID is doing is taking the authentication of the user and authorization (privileges) of the user to OID and out of the database. This way you can centralize the management of all user accounts in one place and not worry about it in the database. This is helpful only if you have many databases. If you have a very small number of databases and small number of user accounts, then OID is not really buying you anything. The best practices is published in the oracle docs. Just that you have to read a lot to figure it all out. Here are some info from our installation.
1. weblogic and oid application is installed on a application server
2. Repository database is a independant database (not shared with other apps) in a shared RAC cluster.
3. Replication (OID application replication) setup between a primary oid server and a secondary oid server in the DR site
4. Load balancer configured to point to the primary server and if primary server is not available, point the connection to secondary server
5. DIP configured to pull all users and groups from active directory
6. Password filter installed on all DC's to capture passwords and ship it to oid.
7. Users creation, modification,deletion, expiry, etc., is all controlled on active directory.
8. Database registered with OID for user authentication and authorization
For protecting you data, you will need to use additional security methods/products like :
1. Database vault (to prevent privileged users from operating on the data)
2. Database auditing
3. Fine-grained access control
4. table level policies
5. Fine-grained auditing (column level)
6. Audit vault (to consolidate all audit records to a central place for auditors to classify and research each audit event)
7. operational/process to enforce security.
Good luck :-).
Regards,
Shaji.