VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources]

Managing Database Access

You may have a database that contains no confidential data, or only be publishing the database within a small network group. But chances are reasonably good that you would rather not offer your users complete administrator access to all of your published databases. If so, you'll want to limit user access.

FileMaker gives you several ways to manage access to your databases. One approach to is to limit access to Web users connecting from specific IP addressesa good solution for an intranet.

Another approach is to use accounts and privilege sets. You can simply enable guest access, which defaults all Web users to read-only status. Alternatively, by setting different levels of access to your database files, you can fine-tune access by group or individual. Any accounts you have already created for a database will flow through to the Web access, but you can create additional accounts specifically for your Web audience.

To restrict access by IP address

1 .

Choose Edit > Sharing > Instant Web Publishing (Windows) FileMaker Pro > Sharing > Instant Web Publishing (Mac) to open the Instant Web Publishing dialog box.

2 .

In the Instant Web Publishing Settings section, click the Advanced Options Specify button (Figure 17.7).

3 .When the Advanced Web Publishing Options dialog box appears, click the "Accessible only from these IP addresses:" check box.

4 .In the box below the check box, type the IP addresses to which you want to grant access. If you want to use more than one IP address, separate the addresses with commas. If you want to allow access to a range of IP addresses, use an asterisk as a wild card (Figure 17.8). Click OK, then OK again to finish.

To limit Web users to read-only access

1 .Choose Edit > Sharing > Instant Web Publishing (Windows) FileMaker Pro > Sharing > Instant Web Publishing (Mac) to open the Instant Web Publishing dialog box.

2 .In the Currently open files box, select a file you want to limit to read-only access.

3 .In the "Instant Web Publishing access to file" section, click the "Specify users by privilege set" radio button.

4 .When the "Specify users by privilege set" dialog box appears, click the Read-Only Access check box (Figure 17.9). Click OK twice to finish.

To create an account with Web access privileges

1 .Choose File > Define > Accounts and Privileges.

2 .When the Define Accounts & Privileges dialog box appears, select the Accounts tab. Click New (Figure 17.10).

3 .

When the Edit Account dialog box appears, type a new Account Name and Password. If this will be a new individual account, click the "User must change password on next login" check box (Figure 17.11). If this is a group account, leave the box unchecked.

4 .From the Privilege Set drop-down list, select New Privilege Set.

5 .Give the new set a name and a description. In the Extended Privileges section, check the Access via Instant Web Publishing check box (Figure 17.12).