Security Considerations

Ad hoc reporting enables users to access data sources on the server and execute custom reports. By default, Ad Hoc Reporting is enabled but protected by the remote interface password. If all users should be allowed to use this feature a complete set of security settings should be applied.

Restricting access to the Ad Hoc Reporting Interface

The Ad Hoc Reporting feature can be restricted for certain users by activating and setting the Ad Hoc Reporting permission in the Users and Groups Manager.

There are two permissions which are relevant to Ad Hoc Reporting:

  • Ad Hoc Reporting: Enables the Ad Hoc Reporting application.
  • Ad Hoc and Designer Data Sources: Enables the user to use the data sources registered at the server for Ad Hoc Reporting. This permission is critical since the user may use Ad Hoc Reporting to read data from internal data sources.

These permissions have to be set for every user who is allowed to use Ad Hoc Reporting. All other users are prohibited from using the Ad Hoc Reporting feature. Please set the permissions for the guest account as well, if the guest account is activated.

Restricting the Ad Hoc Layouts and Data Access

When the report repository is used to store ad hoc layouts and ad hoc dataviews, the access to these resources should be restricted to only have the execute permission. Otherwise users are allowed to accidentally modify or even delete restricted resources.

Using Data Views Instead of Datasources

As a guideline, the access to the servers data sources should only be granted to normal users if your INETAPP server runs in a protected intranet environment. In any other case ad hoc dataviews should be preferred.

An ad hoc dataview acts as a broker between a datasource and the field, the user is allowed to use. It completely hides away the datasource and the internal structure of the database. Furthermore it allows the administrator to define additional filters and use the formula language of i-net Clear Reports to modify data on the fly or create artificial fields for the user.

For a detailed description of ad hoc dataviews have a look at chapter 5 Ad Hoc Dataviews.

Limit pages and CrossTab

Ad hoc reporting enables the users of your server to create and execute reports which may impact the servers performance.

There are three options on the "Performance" tab which are relevant especially for Ad Hoc Reporting:

  • Stop After Page: Limits the number of pages, which will be rendered. This will prevent long running reports.
  • Database Records Limit: Limits the number of records read from the database. This prevents the server from running out of memory.
  • Crosstab Cells Limit: Limits the overall number of cells in a crosstab. This prevents the server from running out of memory.

Please note that these options are global for the server. Setting the page limit for instance will restrict every report executed on this server whether or not it's generated by Ad Hoc Reporting.