Permissions

Permissions, or grants, control access to data in several ways. There are simple access restrictions to SELECT, UPDATE, and so forth, down to a column level.

Note
 Column or table metadata are not visible to JDBC/ODBC users unless the user has permission to read at least a single column.

You may also use permissions to filter and mask results, and constrain/check update values.

User query permissions

CREATE, READ, UPDATE, DELETE (CRUD) permissions can be set for any resource path in a VDB. A resource path can be as specific as the fully qualified name of a column or as general a top level model (schema) name. Permissions granted to a particular path apply to it and any resource paths that share the same partial name. For example, granting select to "model" will also grant select to "model.table", "model.table.column", and so on. Allowing or denying a particular action is determined by searching for permissions from the most to least specific resource paths. The first permission found with a specific allow or deny will be used. Thus, it is possible to set very general permissions at high-level resource path names and to override only as necessary at more specific resource paths.

Permission grants are only needed for resources that a role needs access to. Permissions are also applied only to the columns/tables/procedures in the user query, not to every resource that is accessed transitively through view and procedure definitions. It is important therefore to ensure that permission grants are applied consistently across models that access the same resources.

Warning
 Non-visible models are accessible by user queries. To restrict user access at a model level, at least one data role should be created to enable data role checking. In turn, that role can be mapped to any authenticated user, and should not grant permissions to models that should be inaccessible.

Permissions are not applicable to the SYS and pg_catalog schemas. These metadata reporting schemas are always accessible regardless of the user. The SYSADMIN schema however may need permissions as applicable.

Permission assignment

To process a SELECT statement or a stored procedure execution, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • SELECT- on the Table(s) being accessed or the procedure being called.

  • SELECT- on every column referenced.

To process an INSERT statement, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • INSERT- on the Table being inserted into.

  • INSERT- on every column being inserted on that Table.

To process an UPDATE statement, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • UPDATE- on the Table being updated.

  • UPDATE- on every column being updated on that Table.

  • SELECT- on every column referenced in the criteria.

To process a DELETE statement, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • DELETE- on the Table being deleted.

  • SELECT- on every column referenced in the criteria.

To process a EXEC/CALL statement, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • EXECUTE (or SELECT)- on the Procedure being executed.

To process any function, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • EXECUTE (or SELECT)- on the Function being called.

To process any ALTER or CREATE TRIGGER statement, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • ALTER- on the view or procedure that is effected. INSTEAD OF Triggers (update procedures) are not yet treated as full schema objects and are instead treated as attributes of the view.

To process any OBJECTTABLE function, the user account requires the following access rights:

  • LANGUAGE - specifying the language name that is allowed.

To process any statement against a Teiid temporary table requires the following access rights:

  • allow-create-temporary-tables attribute on any applicable role

  • SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE - against the target model/schema as needed for operations against a FOREIGN temporary table.

Row- and column-based security

Although specified in a similar way to user query CRUD permissions, row-based and column-based permissions may be used together or separately to control the data that is returned to users at a more granular and consistent level.

See also XML Definition for examples of specifying data roles with row and column based security.

Note
Row-based security
Specifying a condition on a GRANT for row based security has been deprecated. Specifying a condition on a GRANT is the same as specifying "CREATE POLICY policyName ON schemaName.tblName TO role USING (condition);", such that the condition applies to all operations.

A POLICY against a fully qualified table/view/procedure may specify a condition to be satisfied by the given role. The condition can be any valid boolean expression referencing the columns of the table/view/procedure. Procedure result set columns may be referenced as proc.col. The condition will act as a row-based filter and as a checked constraint for insert/update operations.

Application of row-based conditions

A condition is applied conjunctively to update/delete/select WHERE clauses against the affected resource. Those queries will therefore only ever be effective against the subset of rows that pass the condition, such as "SELECT * FROM TBL WHERE something AND condition. The condition will be present regardless of how the table/view is used in the query, whether by means of a union, join, or other operation.

Example condition
CREATE POLICY policyName ON schemaName.tblName TO superUser USING ('foo=bar');

Inserts and updates against physical tables affected by a condition are further validated so that the insert/change values must pass the condition (evaluate to true) for the insert/update to succeed — this is effectively the same a SQL constraint. This will happen for all styles of insert/update — insert with query expression, bulk insert/update, and so on. Inserts/updates against views are not checked with regards to the constraint.

You can disable the insert/update constraint check by restricting the operations that the POLICY applies to.

Example DDL non-constraint condition
CREATE POLICY readPolicyName ON schemaName.tblName FOR SELECT,DELETE TO superUser USING ('col>10');

You may of course add another POLICY to cover the INSERT and UPDATE operations should they require a different condition.

Example XML non-constraint condition
  <permission>
    <resource-name>modelName.tblName</resource-name>
    <condition constraint="false">column1=user()</condition>
  </permission>

If more than one POLICY applies to the same resource, the conditions will be accumulated disjunctively via OR, that is, "(condition1) OR (condition2) …". Therefore, creating a POLICY with the condition "true" will allow users in that role to see all rows of the given resource for the given operations.

Considerations when using conditions

Non-pushdown conditions can adversely impact performance, since their evaluation may inhibit pushdown of query constructs on top of the affected resource. Multiple conditions against the same resource should generally be avoided, because any non-pushdown condition causes the entire OR statement to not be pushed down. If you must insert permission conditions, be careful when adding inline views, because they can result in degraded performance if your sources do not support them.

Pushdown of multi-row insert/update operations will be inhibited since the condition must be checked for each row.

You can manage permission conditions on a per-role basis, but another approach is to add condition permissions to any authenticated role. By adding permissions in this way, the conditions are generalized for anyone using the hasRole, user, and other security functions. The advantage of this latter approach is that it provides you with a static row-based policy. As a result, your entire range of query plans can be shared among your users.

How you handle null values is up to you. You can implement ISNULL checks to ensure that null values are allowed when a column is nullable.

Limitations when using conditions

  • Conditions on source tables that act as check constraints must currently not contain correlated subqueries.

  • Conditions may not contain aggregate or windowed functions.

  • Tables and procedures referenced via subqueries will still have row-based filters and column masking applied to them.

Note
 Row-based filter conditions are enforced even for materialized view loads.

You should ensure that tables consumed to produce materialized views do not have row-based filter conditions on them that could affect the materialized view results.

Column masking

A permission against a fully qualified table/view/procedure column can also specify a mask and optionally a condition. When the query is submitted, the roles are consulted, and the relevant mask/condition information are combined to form a searched case expression to mask the values that would have been returned by the access. Unlike the CRUD allow actions defined above, the resulting masking effect is always applied — not just at the user query level. The condition and expression can be any valid SQL referencing the columns of the table/view/procedure. Procedure result set columns may be referenced as proc.col.

Application of column masks

Column masking is applied only against SELECTs. Column masking is applied logically after the affect of row-based security. However, because both views and source tables canb have row- and column-based security, the actual view-level masking can take place on top of source level masking. If the condition is specified along with the mask, then the effective mask expression affects only a subset of the rows: "CASE WHEN condition THEN mask ELSE column". Otherwise the condition is assumed to be TRUE, meaning that the mask applies to all rows.

If multiple roles specify a mask against a column, the mask order argument will determine their precedence from highest to lowest as part of a larger searched case expression. For example, a mask with the default order of 0 and a mask with an order of 1 would be combined as "CASE WHEN condition1 THEN mask1 WHEN condition0 THEN mask0 ELSE column".

Column masking considerations

Non-pushdown masking conditions/expressions can adversely impact performance, because their evaluation might inhibit pushdown of query constructs on top of the affected resource. In some circumstances the insertion of masking may require that the plan be altered with the addition of an inline view, which can result in adverse performance against sources that do not support inline views.

In addition to managing masking on a per-role basis with the use of the order value, another approach is to specify masking in a single any authenticated role such that the conditions/expressions are generalized for all users/roles using the hasRole, user, and other such security functions. The advantage of the latter approach is that there is effectively a static masking policy in effect, such that all query plans can still be shared between users.

Column masking limitations

  • If two masks have the same order value, it is not well defined what order they are applied in.

  • Masks or their conditions cannot contain aggregate or windowed functions.

  • Tables and procedures referenced via subqueries will still have row-based filters and column masking applied to them.

Note
 Masking is enforced even for materialized view loads.

You should ensure that tables consumed to produce materialized views do not have masking on them that could affect the materialized view results.

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