Minimum database permissions for MS SQL Server and CA Process Automation

Products

• CA Process Automation Base

Issue/Introduction

This document describes the minimum permissions necessary to install CA Process Automation, and to then maintain CA Process Automation as the permission sets in MS SQL Server can differ if necessary.

 

Environment

Release: 4.1 or higher
Component:  CA Process Automation

Resolution

Solution:

To install CA Process Automation using a Microsoft SQL Server database, the minimum permissions level for the user is required to be DBCreator.

This may not be a sustainable permission level if this is considered to be an elevated privilege and the DBA is requiring that the user no longer have this level of permissions.

There are two different ways that this can be addressed.

First is to give the user the DBCreator privilege. During the installation, you are provided the option of creating the PAM databases by clicking on a button. This is the only time that the "create" privilege is used.

Once the CA Process Automation application has been installed and it has been verified to be accessible and functional, the permissions for this user may be modified to the following:

• create/alter/drop tables
  
  
• access meta-data for tables
  
  
• perform DMLs on all tables

The second way to do this is to manually create the databases prior to the installation. If this is done, then the user need only have the privileges as follows:

• create/alter/drop tables
  
  
• access meta-data for tables
  
  
• perform DMLs on all tables

At the point in the installation process where you are prompted for the database information, instead of selecting the "create" button, you instead select the "test" button to verify that the databases are available and accessible by the application with the user information that has been provided.