He wants to have the entire database and software on one server, and then have PART of the database replicated in a second database on a second server with only a subset of the management CGIs. This second server's DB will only contain information about the users and none of the accounting information, and the CGIs will only be able to modify the users accounts accordingly.

Perhaps he doesn't understand that most database support the notion of separate logical databases within a physical database (sort of like namespaces). Each database contains a distinct schema, and each database has its own access controls (i.e., grants on a table in one database are kept separate from grants to tables in other databases).

It's easy to set up application to use multiple logical databases. Database users with the correct grants can do queries against tables in separate logical databases (e.g., JOIN queries), while another user might be restricted to seeing only tables in one database. This would work for your application, unless your client has some other concerns that haven't been articulated.

This begs the question, though, of whether it is safe to keep a database on the same box as the web server. For secure applications, the answer is a resounding NO. IIS is notoriously insecure. Even Apache is subject to an occassional exploit. I rant further on this in this thread on storing credit card numbers in databases.

In reply to Re: Twin interfaces, and one and a half databases to a project by dws
in thread Twin interfaces, and one and a half databases to a project by JPaul

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