# Protection of database-wide properties

There is one important exception to the search order for properties described above: When you set the derby.database.propertiesOnly property to true, database-wide properties cannot be overridden by system-wide properties.

This property ensures that a database's environment cannot be modified by the environment in which it is booted. Any application running in an embedded environment can set this property to `true` for security reasons.

Parent topic: Precedence of properties