Traditionally Oracle Rdb has performed security checking using the operating system security layer (for example, the UIC and rights identifiers of the OpenVMS operating system). The access control list (ACL) information stored in the database contains a granted privilege mask and a set of users represented by a unique integer (for example, a UIC). There are two modes of security checking: 1. SECURITY CHECKING IS EXTERNAL This is the default. External security checking recognizes database users as operating system user identification codes (UICs) and roles as special rights identifiers or groups. PERSONA support is enabled or disabled as follows: o SECURITY CHECKING IS EXTERNAL (PERSONA SUPPORT IS ENABLED) Enables the full impersonation of an OpenVMS user. This means the UIC and the granted right identifiers are used to check access control list permissions. o SECURITY CHECKING IS EXTERNAL (PERSONA SUPPORT IS DISABLED) Disables the full impersonation of an OpenVMS user. Only the UIC is used to check access control list permissions. This is the default for a new database, or for a database converted from a prior version of Oracle Rdb. 2. SECURITY CHECKING IS INTERNAL In this mode, Oracle Rdb records users (username and UIC) and roles (rights identifiers) in the database. The CREATE USER and CREATE ROLE statements perform this action explicitly, and GRANT will perform this implicitly. This type of database can now be moved to another system and is only dependent on the names of the users and roles. o SECURITY CHECKING IS INTERNAL (ACCOUNT CHECK IS ENABLED) The ACCOUNT CHECK clause ensures that Oracle Rdb validates the current database user with the user name (such as defined with a CREATE USER statement) stored in the database. This prevents different users with the same name from accessing the database. Therefore, this clause might prevent a breach in security. The ACCOUNT CHECK IS ENABLED clause on OpenVMS forces the user session to have the same user name and UIC as recorded in the database. o SECURITY CHECKING IS INTERNAL (ACCOUNT CHECK IS DISABLED) If you specify the ACCOUNT CHECK IS DISABLED clause, then a user with a matching UIC (also called a profile-id) is considered the same as the user even if his or her user name is different. This allows support for multiple OpenVMS users with the same UIC.