Privileges

The DBA can create a user account but, until the CREATE SESSION system privilege is granted, that user cannot even log on or connect to the database. Once a minimum privilege of CREATE SESSION is granted, the user can connect, but cannot access any objects other than those granted explicitly to him or to the public user.

The public user is a special entry in the data dictionary. Privileges granted to public are automatically available to every user in the system who has been granted the CREATE SESSION privilege. Granting public access is commonly done with tables containing data that must be made generally available, or for objects where access by any user will not compromise anything within the database. A typical example of an area of information which can be made available to the public to view is a States lookup or reference table which contains state names and their respective abbreviations. There is no reason to prevent anyone from seeing the values in the States lookup table, although there would be good business reasons to prevent the general public from having INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE privileges on this table.

About System and Object Privileges

Privileges fall into two general categories: system privileges and object privileges. System privileges allow the user to log on to the system and create or manipulate objects. Object privileges allow the user some sort of access to the data within an object, or allow the user to execute a stored program.

System privileges ...

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