permission inconsistency with functions

From: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: permission inconsistency with functions
Date: 2010-07-23 18:48:50
Message-ID: 1279910930.9866.19.camel@jd-desktop.unknown.charter.com
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Hello,

I am writing a blog on backups with postgresql, which I plan at some
point (if someone doesn't beat me to it) on turning into a patch for the
docs but I found this inconsistency:

The docs state that:

"In particular, it must have read access to all tables that you want to
back up, so in practice you almost always have to run it as a database
superuser."

Ignoring the fact that databases have a lot more objects than tables,
there is no READ/SELECT permission for functions. Thus in order to
backup a function, I must have EXECUTE permissions on the function.
Further if I don't have EXECUTE permissions I can still see the function
in pg_proc.

This seems like an inconsistency worth looking into, especially now that
we have per column perms.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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