The Impact of Inheritance on Security in Object-Oriented Database Systems

The object-oriented programming paradigm is becoming a popular development tool for large complex systems. This is happening for a variety of reasons, such as the richer and more natural data modeling capabilities of the object paradigm, its ability to capture application semantics, and the support it provides for rapid prototyping of systems. A prominent feature of the object paradigm is inheritance. In fact, it is this feature of the object paradigm that leads to many of its advantages. Because the object paradigm is new, little attention has yet been given to security considerations. The purpose of this paper is to point out that while inheritance offers many advantages, it also creates several problems in designing a security model for a general-purpose object-oriented database system. As a result, careful consideration must be given to defining the semantics of inheritance when security is a concern.