Restricting ODBC access

Hi Family. I have a client with a serious concern. Say I (jake) am a regular end user - when I log in to my Unix box, I fall into a captive session, the application's main menu (no shell). In this way I can hit at the database only through the application. BTW, database access happens to be through a shared memory connection, although I suppose socket access should also be set up for this system. Now I get clever - the greatest nightmare of an operations manager. I go back to my PC and access the database via an Excel spreadsheet with ODBC. I run a query and get the results in my sheet. I then update some rows in the sheet (for what-if analysis - innocent) and inadvertently save the data back to the database. Whoops! I have just messed with some data without going into the application. Can anyone come up with a way to prevent database access via ODBC? I can't simply deny ODBC drivers to all PC users - there are other databases to be accessed. The restriction I need should be settable on a database by database basis. (Say that fast 10 times. ;-) Ideally, it should be able to restrict data modifications via ODBC. The one idea I came up with I really don't like: Give everyone different user-id's on the Unix box and on their PC's. Since the PC-based user ID has not been granted priveleges, the database is protected. Now I have noted that whe I access the database from Relational Object Manager (where does Informix come up with these silly product names?) and run onstat -u, my PC session shows up as user JAKE while a regular unix based session shows up as user jake. Might this be suffucient to prevent updates via ODBC connections? I can't test this myself because I have no ODBC drivers on my PC. Any better ideas? Thanks. -- -- Jake (Pondering the color of an asphyxiated smurf) +------------------------------------------------------------+ | The expedient performance of a task with excessive concern | | regarding its duration-to-completion engenders a virtual | | certainty of diminished benefit therefrom. | | -- Benjamin Franklin (but he said it in 3 words) | +------------------------------------------------------------+