7. A method of managing access by multiple users to a limited subset of data, comprising: executing a query against one or more databases; generating a plurality of persistent data objects, wherein generating comprises, for each persistent data object: receiving a query result comprising a dataset obtained from one or more databases in response to execution of a query against the one or more databases; attaching security information to the query result in order to restrict access to the query result, and wherein the security information includes security settings for a plurality of potential requesting entities, the security settings defining access rights of each potential requesting entity to at least a portion of the query result; and storing the query result and the attached security information as a rowset in a persistent data object in a data repository; whereby each respective persistent data object is independently accessible on the basis of the respective security information contained within the respective persistent data object; and granting access to the query result by the multiple users, whereby the access by a particular user is dependent on one or more attributes of the particular user and the security information attached to the query result.
10. The method of claim 7 , wherein the query is received from a user, and access to the limited subset of data by the user is restricted by modifying the query received from the user to remove one or more results fields from the query based on the security information attached to the subset of data and one or more attributes of the user.