Schema signing

A machine-readable medium having instructions stored thereon for at least one processor, the machine-readable medium comprising:

• instructions for verifying whether or not a digital signature associated with the at least one object defined in a database schema of a database is valid;
• instructions for determining that the at least one object defined in the database schema has been tampered with if the digital signature of the at least one object is determined to not be valid using a hash of the at least one object defined in the database schema calculated based upon a type of the at least one object defined in the database schema;
• and
• instructions for, to protect a software application that uses the database from malicious content, denying access to the at least one object based on a result of determination that the at least one object defined in the database schema has been tampered with, wherein the machine-readable medium is an item from a group of items consisting of a memory, a magnetic disk and an optical disk.

A computer-implemented system comprising:

• a processor coupled to a memory, the memory storing instructions which when executed cause the processor to perform the acts of:
• verifying whether or not a digital signature associated with the at least one object defined in the database schema is valid;
• determining that the at least one object defined in the database schema has been tampered with if the digital signature of the at least one object is determined to not be valid;
• and
• to protect a software application that uses the database from malicious content, denying access to the at least one object based on a result of determination that the at least one object defined in the database schema has been tampered with.