Column-level constraints on updating

From: Garrett Fitzgerald (gfitzger@nyx.net)
Date: 10/08/02 

From: Garrett Fitzgerald <gfitzger@nyx.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 23:33:45 -0700

I have a scenario where I would like different users to be able to update
different columns in a table. A top-level user would be able to update all
columns: a bottom-level user would be able to see all columns, but only
update a couple.

When I assigned column-level security to the table, any updates that
included the forbidden column did not go through at all. So, I googled a
bit, and came up with the solution of using the IS_MEMBER function in an
UPDATE trigger to replace the fields that shouldn't be touched with the
value from the deleted table. This seemed to work quite well, assuming that
I don't want the user to know that her update "only partially succeeded".

Is there a middle ground, where I can tell the user that some of the fields
didn't change, but I allow the valid changes to go through? Thanks.