Say that I have vendors selling various products. So, at a basic level, I will have the following tables: vendor, product, vendor_product.
If vendor-1 adds Widget 1 to the product table, I want only vendor-1 to see that information (because that information is “owned” by vendor-1). Same goes for vendor-2. Say vendor-2 adds Widget 2, only vendor-2 should see that information.
If vendor-1 tries to add Widget 2, which was already entered by vendor-2, a duplicate entry for Widget 2 should not be made in the product table. This means that, somehow, I need to know that vendor-2 now also “owns” Widget 2.
A problem with having multiple “owners” of a piece of information is how to deal owners editing/deleting the data. Perhaps vendor-1 no longer wants Widget 2 to be available to him/her, but that doesn’t necessarily apply for vendor-2.
Finally, I want the ability to flag(?) certain records as “yes, I have reviewed this data and it is correct” such that it then becomes available to all the vendors. Say I flag Widget 1 as good data, that product should now be seen by all vendors.
It seems that the solution is row level security. The problem is that I’m not too familiar with its concepts or how to implement it in MySQL. Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks.
NOTE: this problem is somewhat discussed here: Database Design: use composite key as FK, flag data for sharing?. When I asked the question, I wasn’t sure how to phrase the question very well. Hopefully, I explained my problem better this time.
Mysql doesn’t natively support row level security on tables. However, you can sort of implement it with views. So, just create a view on your table that exposes only the rows you want a given client to see. Then, only provide that client access to those views, and not the underlying tables.
See http://www.sqlmaestro.com/resources/all/row_level_security_mysql/