Essentials

A single database user can be used to grant access to the BL product databases. By default some BL products will try to connect using the root user that always exists in the MySQL installation. Recent versions of MySQL server install without access to the root user from outside the localhost (i.e. it cannot be used from any other server except its own.) To support this version 7.1.4.4 for Super Ticker and Brando version 7.5.4.2 now create 2 new users for our apps to connect with (Player and Updater) Your options then at this point include:

• use the Super Ticker installer created users - Player and Updater instead of root
• granting access to the root user from any server/host by using the wildcard syntax % as the host name
• granting access to the root user from the specific hosts you know you will run Flow and/or other BL apps on (Eg. RSS Reader, Weather Reader, etc)
• creating a new user with the required privileges and assigning it to the apps in setup

CREATE USER 'BL' IDENTIFIED BY 'bl-password';  -- make your own password 

Remote Privileges and Supporting Apps

During the MySQL install, the user is no longer asked if they would like to allow remote access for the root user. Limiting root access to the local machine only is a good security practice. To support this Flow (version 7.1.4.4 for Super Ticker and Flow for Brando version 7.5.4.2) now create 2 users for our apps to use to connect with by default

• Player
  • is read-only with updates only allowed for a few select reporting tables
• Updater
  • has update privileges

The simplest but least secure option used in the past was to simply provide access to the database from remote systems use the following commands to enable non-local access for the root user account.

UPDATE mysql.user SET host = '%' WHERE host = '127.0.0.1' AND user == 'root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Required Privileges

You may create a single user that provides access for both Flow and any other BL apps you are using.

Flow

Flow requires an extensive set of privileges to allow it to update the database schema during installation and/or upgrades as well as managing the data in use.

GRANT 
	ALTER,
	ALTER ROUTINE,
	CREATE,
	CREATE ROUTINE,
	CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES,
	CREATE VIEW,
	DELETE,
	DROP,
	EXECUTE,
	INDEX,
	INSERT,
	LOCK TABLES,
	SELECT,
	SHOW VIEW,
	TRIGGER,
	UPDATE
ON superticker.*
TO 'BL';

GRANT 
	CREATE USER, 
	RELOAD, 
	SHOW DATABASES, 
	SUPER 
ON *.* 
TO 'BL'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;

BL Apps

You could use the same user for both Flow and the BL apps. If you wish to separate them note that most BL apps run with a much more limited privilege requirements.

GRANT 
	DELETE,
	EXECUTE,
	INSERT,
	LOCK TABLES,
	SELECT,
	UPDATE
ON superticker.* 
TO 'BLapps';

Suspending Privileges

You may want to temporarily disable the access to the database. In that case you would use a REVOKE command:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON superticker.* FROM 'BL';

Replication Privileges

In situations where you want to use replication to provide a ongoing backup source you need additional privileges.

Replication User for copying and monitoring

You may choose to grant the privileges to an existing user or create a specific user for replication on the master/primary server. That account will need only the global privilege:

• REPLICATION SLAVE.
  

 The DMan app can be used in scenarios with replication to provide status monitoring. To do so it will require the privileges:

• REPLICATION CLIENT
• SELECT 

Using SQL 

GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE, 
	REPLICATION CLIENT, 
	SUPER,
	SELECT
	ON *.* 
TO 'blbackup' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*4D8DE8683A65AFAB16B91226426A0D9116C664D6';

NOTE that the REPLICATION privileges can only be granted at the global level and not specific database on the server.

Using Workbench

 If you are doing so using the MySQL Workbench app you may find that it's easy to get the necessary priviliges on the user account by selecting the 

• Administrative Roles
  • ReplicationAdmin
  • BackupAdmin

Read-Only Privileges

If you wished to grant read-only privileges you would need to assign:

• SELECT ON all tables
• EXECUTE ON FUNCTION CalcUtilityStatus

Flow will then be able to display the content but no changes will be able to me made. Note that Flow is not truly designed to operate in view mode except when using a browsing only user and as a result when using other user types you may encounter errors if you try to perform an action that requires a change to the content.

Flow version will need to be greater then 6.11.4.2 to support even this basic access when only SELECT privileges are given.

CREATE USER 'BLreadonly' IDENTIFIED BY 'bl-password';  -- make your own password 
GRANT SELECT ON `superticker`.* TO 'BLreadonly';
GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION `superticker`.`CalcUtilityStatus` TO 'BLreadonly';