Locking Records Against Changes

August 3rd 2009

In several different venues over the past several days a number of different developers have inquired about processes for locking records in a table against further changes once a set of business rules are satisfied.

Unfortunately in some instances the recommendations given in answer to these inquiries can fail and leave records vulnerable to hacking. These include the idea that layout access manipulation can somehow protect the record against being altered.

In my view the best and most secure way to institute a record lock process is to use the Record Level Access privileges options found in the Edit Privilege Set options.

For any given table, create a field named “Lock” of the type number, auto-enter data of 1. Check the flag saying “Prohibit modification of value during data entry.”

Then in the Manage Accounts & Privileges-->Privilege Sets-->Edit Privilege Sets--> Records, select Custom Privileges. In the Edit column for the table you want, select limited. Pick the field “Lock” from the list of fields.

In the Field Access column, select the field “Lock” and mark it for No Access. This affords maximum protection against the field’s being modified in an unauthorized fashion and altering the state of the record.

When the circumstances occur that cause you to want to lock the record, use a script set to “Run script with full access privileges” to set the field “Lock” to 0. If “Lock”=1, the default entered value, the record can be edited. If “Lock”=0, the record cannot be edited.

Do not try to lock a layout. That is a chimera and the tail has a real sting.

Steven