| PostgreSQL 8.1.23 Documentation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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The catalog pg_authid contains information about database authorization identifiers (roles). A role subsumes the concepts of "users" and "groups". A user is essentially just a role with the rolcanlogin flag set. Any role (with or without rolcanlogin) may have other roles as members; see pg_auth_members.
Since this catalog contains passwords, it must not be publicly readable. pg_roles is a publicly readable view on pg_authid that blanks out the password field.
Chapter 18 contains detailed information about user and privilege management.
Because user identities are cluster-wide, pg_authid is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_authid per cluster, not one per database.
Table 42-8. pg_authid Columns
| Name | Type | References | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| rolname | name | Role name | |
| rolsuper | bool | Role has superuser privileges | |
| rolinherit | bool | Role automatically inherits privileges of roles it is a member of | |
| rolcreaterole | bool | Role may create more roles | |
| rolcreatedb | bool | Role may create databases | |
| rolcatupdate | bool | Role may update system catalogs directly. (Even a superuser may not do this unless this column is true.) | |
| rolcanlogin | bool | Role may log in, that is, this role can be given as the initial session authorization identifier. | |
| rolconnlimit | int4 | For roles that can log in, this sets maximum number of concurrent connections this role can make. -1 means no limit. | |
| rolpassword | text | Password (possibly encrypted); NULL if none | |
| rolvaliduntil | timestamptz | Password expiry time (only used for password authentication); NULL if no expiration | |
| rolconfig | text[] | Session defaults for run-time configuration variables |