TRANSPARENT TUNNELING ARCHITECTURE FOR A SECURED DATABASE

A method and associated systems for a transparent tunneling architecture for a secured database. A tunneling driver captures a user's database-access request before it can be blocked by a security gateway. The driver translates the request into a Web-service request, where the requested Web service is implemented by means of classes or objects that correspond to database operations. The request is formatted into a standard database-independent form that the security gateway allows to pass to the database server intact. A Web-service runtime environment interprets the requested Web service, thereby instructing the server-side database-management application to respond to the user's access request. In a reverse procedure, the database's response is translated into a Web-service response to the requested Web service that may similarly tunnel through the security gateway, and that is then translated back into a form that may be properly interpreted by the requesting user's client application.