Controlling Access to Shared Data

About data access restrictions

As an administrator, you are responsible for controlling read and write access to the shared database on your level in the tiered structure. By default, users have both read and write access to data in the shared database. When appropriate, you can prevent one or more users from writing to a particular slice of data to which they would otherwise have access.

Role of write access profile

A write access profile enables you to select a slice of data and prevent specific users or all users who have access to that data from contributing data to the shared database for values of the slice.

When you restrict users' write access to data, you prevent them from writing new data values to the dimensions in the shared database; you do not restrict the users' ability to view that data or to work with it in reports, graphs, worksheets, or data entry forms.

Examples: Restricting data access

Following are some of the ways in which you might want to restrict access to data for a financial data item.

Preventing all users from accessing values of one dimension

You can deny access to one or more values of a single dimension. For example, if you want to prevent all users from changing Actuals data in the shared database for the month of June, you can deny write access to the June value of the Time dimension for the financial data item. This action denies all users write access to the June Time dimension value and to any Actuals data dimensioned by June.

Preventing all users from accessing a combination of values of two or more dimensions

You can deny write access to one or more values of two or more dimensions. For example, if you want to prevent all users from changing Actuals data for the organizations London, Chicago, and New York for the month of November, you can deny write access to the London, Chicago, and New York values of the Organization dimension and to the November value of the Time dimension. This action denies all users write access to those dimension values and to any Actuals data dimensioned by those values.

Preventing specific users from accessing dimensions

You can deny write access to one or more users. For example, you might deny write access to Actuals to users who are entering data into data entry forms over the web. This will prevent the users from overwriting data cells for Actuals.