Setting Privilege Inheritance on Tables and Views

Enabling inherited privileges with ALTER SCHEMA ... DEFAULT INCLUDE PRIVILEGES only affects newly created tables and views.

This setting does not affect already-existing tables and views.

If inherited privileges are enabled for the database and a schema, privileges granted to the schema are automatically granted to all new tables and views in it. You can also explicitly exclude tables and views from inheriting schema privileges.

For information about which tables and views inherit privileges from which schemas, see INHERITING_OBJECTS.

For information about which privileges each table or view inherits, see the INHERITED_PRIVILEGES.

Set Privileges Inheritance on Tables and Views

CREATE TABLE/ALTER TABLE and CREATE VIEW/ALTER VIEW can allow tables and views to inherit privileges from their parent schemas. For example, the following statements enable inheritance on schema s1, so new table s1.t1 and view s1.myview automatically inherit the privileges set on that schema as applicable:

=> CREATE SCHEMA s1 DEFAULT INCLUDE PRIVILEGES;
CREATE SCHEMA
=> GRANT USAGE, CREATE, SELECT, INSERT ON SCHEMA S1 TO PUBLIC;
GRANT PRIVILEGE
=> CREATE TABLE s1.t1 ( ID int, f_name varchar(16), l_name(24));
WARNING 6978:  Table "t1" will include privileges from schema "s1"
CREATE TABLE
=> CREATE VIEW s1.myview AS SELECT ID, l_name FROM s1.t1 
WARNING 6978:  View "myview" will include privileges from schema "s1"
CREATE VIEW

Both CREATE statements omit the clause INCLUDE SCHEMA PRIVILEGES, so they return a warning message that the new objects will inherit schema privileges. CREATE statements that include this clause do not return a warning message.

If the schema already exists, you can use ALTER SCHEMA to have all newly created tables and views inherit the privileges of the schema. Tables and views created on the schema before this statement, however, are not affected:

=> CREATE SCHEMA s2;
CREATE SCHEMA
=> CREATE TABLE s2.t22 ( a int ); CREATE TABLE … => ALTER SCHEMA S2 DEFAULT INCLUDE PRIVILEGES; ALTER SCHEMA

In this case, inherited privileges were enabled on schema s2 after it already contained table s2.t22. To set inheritance on this table and other existing tables and views, you must explicitly set schema inheritance on them with ALTER TABLE and ALTER VIEW:

=> ALTER TABLE s2.t22 INCLUDE SCHEMA PRIVILEGES;

Exclude Privileges Inheritance from Tables and Views

You can use CREATE TABLE/ALTER TABLE and CREATE VIEW/ALTER VIEW to prevent table and views from inheriting schema privileges.

The following example shows how to create a table that does not inherit schema privileges:

=> CREATE TABLE s1.t1 ( x int) EXCLUDE SCHEMA PRIVILEGES;

You can modify an existing table so it does not inherit schema privileges:

=> ALTER TABLE s1.t1 EXCLUDE SCHEMA PRIVILEGES;