Re: type privileges and default privileges

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 11:17 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
> * Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
>> > Certainly a big one that people get caught by is our default of execute
>> > to public on functions..  Most of our privileges are set up as minimal
>> > access to others, functions are an oddity in that regard.  Rather than
>> > fight the battle of what the default *should* be for functions, we could
>> > just give the DBA the ability to configure it for their database.
>>
>> Sure, let's do.  But that hardly means that we need to store useless
>> catalog records in every database with the DBA doesn't do that.
>
> Fair enough, so the direction would be to add 'IN DATABASE' options to
> 'ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES' and have all the same options there, plus
> flags for schema (and any other schema-level/entire-database things)
> options?  I presume that the 'IN SCHEMA' / 'FOR USER' options would be
> used, where those exist, and we'd only fall back to the higher ones if
> those don't exist?

Oh, I didn't realize that you were proposing a database-wide setting;
my point was just that the way the feature looks to the user doesn't
have to dictate the catalog representation.

I'm not entirely certain whether a database-wide setting is useful
enough to justify the additional complexity. I'm not saying it isn't,
just wondering out loud. To need this rather than just a per-schema
facility, you'd need to be using enough schemas (or creating new ones
frequently enough) that setting the privileges one schema at a time
would be inconvenient. How common is that?

--
Robert Haas
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