Adding a Windows NT User or Group

Existing Microsoft® Windows NT® accounts (users or groups) are granted permissions to connect to Microsoft SQL Server™ before they can access a database. If all members of a Windows NT group will be connecting to SQL Server, you can grant permission to connect to SQL Server for the group as a whole. Managing group permissions is much easier than redundantly managing permissions for individual users. If a Windows NT group should not be granted permission collectively, you can grant permission to connect to SQL Server for each individual Windows NT user.

Users

When granting a Windows NT user access to connect to SQL Server, specify the Windows NT domain or computer name the user belongs to, followed by a backslash, and then the user. For example, to grant access to the Windows NT user Andrew, in the Windows NT domain LONDON, specify LONDON\Andrew as the username.

Local and Global Groups

There are two Windows NT groups: local and global.

Global groups contain user accounts from the Windows NT Server domain in which they are created. Global groups cannot contain other groups or users from other domains and cannot be created on a computer running Windows NT Workstation.

Local groups can contain user accounts and global groups from the domain in which they are created and in any trusted domain. Local groups cannot contain other local groups.

Additionally, Windows NT has predefined, built-in local groups, for example Administrators, Users, and Guests. By default, these built-in groups are always available on any Windows NT computer, unless they are explicitly removed.

When granting a Windows NT local or global group access to connect to SQL Server, specify the domain or computer name the group is defined on, followed by a backslash, and then the group name. However, to grant access to a Windows NT built-in, local group, specify BUILTIN instead of the domain or computer name. For example, to grant access to a global group called SQL_Users, in the LONDON domain, specify LONDON\SQL_Users as the group name to add to SQL Server. However, to grant access to the built-in Windows NT local group Administrators, specify BUILTIN\Administrators as the group name to add to SQL Server.

For more information about Windows NT accounts, see your Windows NT documentation.

To grant a Windows NT user or group login access to SQL Server