Re: Something I don't understand with the use of schemas

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 06:37:03PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com> writes:
> > On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 05:43:47PM -0500, Rod Taylor wrote:
> >> A sudo equivalent would be a version of psql that always connected to
> >> the database using super-user and allowed command execution based on a
> >> regular expression. Bit of a hack to say the least.
>
> > How is that at all what you're describing?
> > sudo gives you the ability to run a command as root, plain and simple.
>
> Perhaps you should read the sudo documentation sometime ;-). sudo
> allows fairly fine-grained control over who can become which userid
> and what commands they can issue. (At least the Linux version does.)
>
> I'm not sure that a psql sudo would have to have all that, since to
> some extent it'd duplicate the existing SQL permissions machinery,

Yeah, that's taking my analogy farther than I intended. :)

> but at the very least it needs to allow specification of the target
> userid. There isn't any universal equivalent to "root" that we could
> sensibly default to in Postgres. So you're really talking about

Database owner?

> Implementing sudo on the psql side would be a bit of a PITA, because
> of the problem of "how do you reset role if the called command fails
> (and thereby aborts your open transaction)?" On the backend side I
> think it could use the same reset mechanism that already exists for
> security-definer functions...

Heh, I figured adding this to the grammar would be a nightmare compared
to anything else; shows what (little) I know. :)
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
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