Databases have failed the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Databases have failed the web

#141

Post by dpark » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 11:37 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #134

dpark wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing for a separation of customer and admin accounts. These scenarios are both easier if admin and user are rolled together. If administration is tied into your corporate user system, then transferring a product means it's a pain to enable administration in the destination environment. What you're actually arguing for is keeping app auth separate from corp auth. And that's pretty reasonable, but app admin i…

Apologies, I was always arguing for a separation of corporate and customer accounts. My assertion is essentially that all administration of the application is done by corporate users, not application users. Now, it is not uncommon to actually do this in three parts. A set of users that covers administration. Often made by tools that guarantee corporate level access to these accounts. And then a separate system built…

> Consider, why not support all users being able to just login to the systems that run the application? It is ultimately the same argument, no?

I don't know what this means.

I don't think there's a good argument for having multiple auth systems in general, much less three. It's a lot of redundancy for little reason. It ends up complicating every app as they end up needing to support multiple systems to support both end users and administrators.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that Google has a single auth system for all users, including employees, and that they've wired up their databases to honor the single auth source.

Re: Databases have failed the web

#142

Post by taeric » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #141

taeric wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies, I was always arguing for a separation of corporate and customer accounts. My assertion is essentially that all administration of the application is done by corporate users, not application users. Now, it is not uncommon to actually do this in three parts. A set of users that covers administration. Often made by tools that guarantee corporate level access to these accounts. And then a separate system built…

> Consider, why not support all users being able to just login to the systems that run the application? It is ultimately the same argument, no? I don't know what this means. I don't think there's a good argument for having multiple auth systems in general, much less three. It's a lot of redundancy for little reason. It ends up complicating every app as they end up needing to support multiple systems to support both e…

My point is this doesn't end at the database. So, you can successfully let the database manage users and access permissions to the data in the database. But then, why not let the operating system that the database is running on control that?

And how is that a different argument than what you are proposing here?

Re: Databases have failed the web

#143

Post by taeric » Sat, Apr 08, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #136

taeric wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You gain making users of your system a first class and distinct part of your application from those that maintain it. Or, would you rather swap a regular user entry into and away from a maintenance role when you hire/fire someone? (Certainly doable, but seems extreme.) You also gain the ability to severely lock down destructive permissions to the database behind fairly rigid authentication rules.

> Or, would you rather swap a regular user entry into and away from a maintenance role when you hire/fire someone? (Certainly doable, but seems extreme.) How is it extreme; granting or dropping permissions to a particular Role for one user account is certainly not more extreme than dropping or addin a user account in that situation, which is the alternative. > You also gain the ability to severely lock down destructi…

It seems extreme to base my user account of a product on my employment status. Too much that could go wrong, when you could just make your application completely independent of your organization.

My point is that there is not a single user of my applications that has the ability to drop tables from a database. In your world, there would be some. But again, why? Why should any given user of GMail, for example, be able to delete any accounts on GMail? I can see why an employee of Google would be able to. But why a user of GMail?

Re: Databases have failed the web

#144

Post by dpark » Sun, Apr 09, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #142

dpark wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider, why not support all users being able to just login to the systems that run the application? It is ultimately the same argument, no? I don't know what this means. I don't think there's a good argument for having multiple auth systems in general, much less three. It's a lot of redundancy for little reason. It ends up complicating every app as they end up needing to support multiple systems to support both e…

My point is this doesn't end at the database. So, you can successfully let the database manage users and access permissions to the data in the database. But then, why not let the operating system that the database is running on control that? And how is that a different argument than what you are proposing here?

All I was saying is that we already have auth systems and don't use them. The DB has auth. As you noted, your OS has auth. And yet we insist on reimplementing auth for our users again and again (often with terrible flaws). It does feel like something is wrong with this.