ITPEC FE Subject A April 2025 Question 18

Topic: DatabasesAlso asked in October 2019

Of the functions provided by a DBMS, which of the following is a means for achieving protection for data confidentiality?

a)Checking referential constraints when the data is updatedb)Managing a transaction that combines a series of processes as a logical unitc)Managing the data access rights of usersd)Placing an exclusive lock to data before updates

Explanation

Managing users' data access rights — confidentiality means only authorised users can read the data, and access rights enforce exactly that.

The DBMS grants each user or role privileges (read, insert, update, delete) on each table or view and refuses anything not granted, for example with SQL GRANT and REVOKE.

Answer (c)

Why not others:

•(a) — referential constraints keep foreign keys pointing at existing rows, which protects integrity
•(b) — transaction management makes a series of updates all-or-nothing, which protects integrity after failures
•(d) — exclusive locks stop concurrent updates from interfering with each other; this concurrency control also protects integrity

Key rule: Confidentiality is about who may see the data (access control, encryption); integrity is about the data staying correct (constraints, transactions, locks).

Databases · AI-written, may contain errors

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