Subject Delegating SYSDBA and enumerating users
Author
Post date 2017-02-21T20:29:06Z
In a production environment using Firebird v2.5, we need to delegate authority of USER CRUD operations to more than one person without these admins sharing the SYSDBA user and password.

These admins have been created as users with ADMIN ROLE, and are logged in under the RDB$ADMIN ROLE (eg in Flame Robin or via the .NET Provider, or '-admin' switch in gsec). With this ROLE, it is possible to perform Creation, Update, and Deletion operations of CRUD via Flame Robin as well as gsec.

The roadblock, however, is not being able to list/enumerate the users (ie Read). In gsec when logged in as SYSDBA all users are displayed via the 'display' command, whereas using another RDB$ADMIN superuser only the logged in user is displayed. The latter is also the case when using the .NET Provider and making the call to FirebirdSql.Data.Services.FbSecurity.DisplayUsers(). Via Flame Robin menu Server | Manager Users, you are prompted with the Database Credentials dialog with Username pre-populated with 'SYSDBA' and read-only.

To delegate user management, it is necessary to have users other than SYSDBA to be able to list and enumerate them. This is required even simply to avoid name clashes.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated on how it is possible to do this, or if it isn't possible, potential alternative(s). Lastly, are there differences and/or does this problem disappear with Firebird v3.0?

My end goal here is implementation in Visual Studio C# using SQL through FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient or directly through FirebirdSql.Data.Services, although solutions through other approaches would be welcome.

Thanks in advance,
David