Embodiments regard protected handling of database queries. An embodiment of a method for querying database system views and tables includes: receiving a user query from a user, the user query being directed to one or both of a view and a table of a database, wherein the user is not a database administrator; parsing the user query with a query parser to identify elements of the user query, parsing the query including determining whether the query meets certain database access criteria; automatically generating a database query based on the parsing of the user query, the generation of the database query including generating a database query that is limited by the database access criteria; accessing the one or both of the view and the table using the generated database query, wherein the access is limited to read-only access; and obtaining a result of the access of the one or both of the view and table.