How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

JJ Cañas — Fri, 03 May 2024 08:56:03 GMT

Hi Chris,

Maybe this will help us, we'll check it out.

Thank you very much!

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

David Jimenez — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:57:50 GMT

Why do you want to implement this behaviour? Could you explain a little bit about it?

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

Chris — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:45:12 GMT

This does sound like strange security configuration. Otherwise, one suggestion would be to restrict access to this area of the database to a specific DB account, and utilize the Query Database Service in this process to retrieve your token. In this case, you can setup a custom data source directly within this one Query DB node, which can be the only place that has the password to the account that can access the tokens.

Of course, developers may be able to copy/paste this node from the model (we would have to test if this brings the PW along also, maybe not?), but would be less obvious than using an admin console connection and expression rule. It is still "Security by Obscurity" however.

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

Stefan Helzle — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:25:27 GMT

Without knowing the details, but for me, this feels more like obscurity than security.

So this is not about the expression, but about restricting access to certain items in a database, correct?

I suggest to contact Appian for ideas about how to do this. If you do that, maybe you could share some details here.

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

JJ Cañas — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:15:27 GMT

It is due to a security requirement. We have to store access tokens to client services in Appian database and we have to prevent a query to this table from being used from the Appian front-end. For this, we intend for this query to be done only from a specific process.

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

Harsh Kumar Agarwal — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 14:05:37 GMT

Hi JJ Cañas,

Can you explain the rational behind this design decision?

RE: How to prevent an object from being used where it shouldn't

Stefan Helzle — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 13:00:33 GMT

I do not see a way to prevent that. This feels like an awkward design decision. I am curious. Why is that?

Instead of writing an expression, you could put that code into a script task. This is not exactly a best practice, but might be an option for your specific case.