About sharing workbooks and security

Discoverer uses database usernames and database roles (and Applications user ID and responsibilities) to manage workbook security. You can share a workbook with:

• all Discoverer users (by sharing the workbook with the PUBLIC database user)

• individual Discoverer users (by sharing the workbook with named database users (and/or roles))

  Note: Many Discoverer users might connect to Discoverer using the same database username via a public connection (for more information, see "What are public connections?").

You can only share workbooks that you own (i.e. workbooks created with the database username that you are connected as).

How Discoverer controls access to data depends on whether you share an ordinary workbook or a scheduled workbook, as follows:

• When you share a workbook in Discoverer, you share the workbook definition, not the workbook data itself. The workbook data that a user can access is dependent on the users' database access privileges. Discoverer users can only access data to which they have database access privileges. For example, if you share a workbook with a group of Discoverer users, each user will only see the worksheets containing data to which they have been granted database access. In other words, the database administrator (i.e. DBA) controls database access for you.

• When you share a scheduled workbook in Discoverer, you share the workbook definition and the workbook data of all scheduled workbook results sets produced by that scheduled workbook. For example, if you share a workbook with a group of Discoverer users, each user can see all of the data, regardless of what database access they have been granted.

  In other words, this gives you a powerful way to publish Discoverer data. Therefore, you need to make sure that you only share scheduled workbook data with Discoverer users who are allowed access to that data. For more information about sharing scheduled workbooks, see "About sharing workbooks and security").