User Interface Considerations

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You must create a user interface using a program outside of the Workflow Designer for SQL Server, such as Microsoft® Access. To use the Workflow Designer's features fully, your user interface must interact with the database and the Workflow Services for SQL Server.

Web Security Considerations

Because Workflow Designer uses Microsoft® FrontPage® Server extensions, when deploying to an existing Web site, owners must have FrontPage administrator permissions on the Web site.

When connecting to a database from your Web pages, it is recommended you use views rather than tables, because row-level permissions can be set on views. For example, in the Issue Tracking sample, the Web pages use IssuesView rather than the Issues table.

Web Server Security

If you want to take advantage of Microsoft® Windows® 2000 security features for data access and sharing while you are creating a Web site, it is important to use the NTFS file system partitioning on the server containing the Web site.

There are several reasons to consider using NTFS:

  • NTFS makes it possible for you to configure the Access Control List (ACL) to grant or deny various forms of access to user and group accounts.

    Note   An ACL is a list of user accounts, user groups, and their privileges associated with a particular resource, such as a directory or file. For example, a file could have a list of user accounts and user groups that can access it and information about what level of access they are granted to the file, such as read, write, or execute. ACLs are another core feature of the Windows 2000 security model and make it possible for flexible and precise access control to resources on the hard disk. Each directory and file has its own ACL that defines who can do what and where. Each ACL even has an ACL that specifies who can view and change the ACL itself.

  • NTFS is more efficient with hard drive space.

  • NTFS makes it possible for you to assign a variety of protections to files and directories, specifying which groups or individual accounts can access these resources in which ways. By using the inherited permissions feature and by assigning permissions to groups rather than to individual accounts, you can simplify the chore of maintaining appropriate protections.

See Also

Developing a User Interface for SQL Server | Row-Level Permissions and the Workflow User Interface | Creating User Interfaces | Help Files in Workflow Applications | User Information for Workflow Applications | Using Alternative User Interfaces