Re: should we allow users with a predefined role to access pg_backend_memory_contexts view and pg_log_backend_memory_contexts function?

On Thu, 2021-10-14 at 14:22 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> I am not really sure that we can get away with changing this, since
> it
> is long-established behavior. At least, if we do, we are going to
> have
> to warn people to watch out for backward-compatibility issues, some
> of
> which may not be things breaking functionally but rather having a
> different security profile. But, in a green field, I don't know why
> it's sane to suppose that if you query a view, the things in the view
> behave partly as if the user querying the view were running them, and
> partly as if the user owning the view were one of them. It seems much
> more logical for it to be one or the other.

How do you feel about at least allowing the functions to execute (and
if it's SECURITY INVOKER, possibly encountering a permissions failure
during execution)?

There are of course security implications with any change like that,
but it seems like a fairly minor one unless I'm missing something. Why
would an admin give someone the privileges to read a view if it will
always fail due to lack of execute privilege?

Regards,
Jeff Davis