[school-discuss] Firebird database infrastructure

["Max Polk" <maxpolk@lycos.com>]

I'm building a GPL database server infrastructure using the Firebird database server (which is based on the open-sourced Interbase 6).  Basically I'm working on a free way to install a database server on one machine, and any networked computer (or even that server itself) can run client software.

So far, the design is to allow all to log in (administrators, teachers, assistants, and students), and I have some basic table designs for authentication, security, privacy, and a XML-based reporting from the client upon which XSLT or XSLT-FO can be applied to form reports or PDF file for permanent archiving of things like tests and report cards.

At first, I'm figuring out how to secure the data on a Windows machine, seeing that you can poke bytes into the raw database .gdb file and the database server can't tell you did this.  And unless you have Windows NT, 2000, or XP, you can't stop people from touching the file this way.

This seems to be a problem with file-based servers.  If I insist upon NT, 2000, or XP, it may be cost prohibitive, especially since I'm looking to help something work on ANY computing environment and Linux, not expensive machines or OS's which cost too much.

Possibly have to encrypt and store hash of data for each row so changes can be detected and logically invalidated.

If others are experienced and seriously interested in helping, let me know and maybe we can turn this into a sourceforge- or savannah-hosted project so we can work together.