Systems and methods are described for implementing attribute aware, relationship-based access control by receiving a query to access a relational database from a user, determining if a rule of the relational database is applicable to the query, determining one or more relationships associated with the query based at least in part on the rule, and modifying the query by adding an extra join operation to the query based at least in part on the rule and the one or more relationships. Further, when a type of the rule is row level, a where clause filter is added to the modified query to enforce a condition of the rule, and when the type of the rule is field level, a case column is added to the modified query and a select clause is added to the modified query to wrap the query. The modified query is processed to produce a result.