US Patent 7243097 Extending relational database systems to automatically enforce privacy policies

A method of transforming relational database management systems into their privacy-preserving equivalents is provided. Language constructs allow fine grained access control (FGAC) restrictions to be specified on the access to data in a table at the level of a row, a column or a cell. Fine grained restrictions are a combination of access control and privacy policy restrictions, which ensure compliance with current privacy legislation mandates.