Re: Permissions, "soft read failure" - wishful thinking? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Jack Christensen
Subject Re: Permissions, "soft read failure" - wishful thinking?
Date
Msg-id 566F7EC3.8070608@jackchristensen.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Permissions, "soft read failure" - wishful thinking?  (Benjamin Smith <lists@benjamindsmith.com>)
Responses Re: Permissions, "soft read failure" - wishful thinking?  ("David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
On 12/14/2015 11:55 AM, Benjamin Smith wrote:
> Is there a way to set PG field-level read permissions so that a deny doesn't
> cause the query to bomb, but the fields for which permission is denied to be
> nullified?
>
> In our web-based app, we have a request to implement granular permissions:
> table/field level permissions. EG: userX can't read customers.socialsecurity in
> any circumstance. We'd like to implement DB-level permissions; so far, we've
> been using an ORM to manage CRUD permissions.
>
> This is old hat, but our system has a large number of complex queries that
> immediately break if *any* field permission fails. So, implementing this for
> customers could be *very* painful....
>
> Is that there is a way to let the query succeed, but nullify any fields where
> read permissions fail? (crossing fingers) We'd be watching the PG logs to
> identify problem queries in this case.
>
>
If userX is a real database user you create a customers view in the
userX schema that selects from the real customers table and either omits
the field entirely or nullifies it. Permissions could be used to deny
access to the underlying table, and search_path could be used to avoid
most if not all application level changes.

Jack



pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: John R Pierce
Date:
Subject: Re: Feature Request: Faceting for full text search
Next
From: "David G. Johnston"
Date:
Subject: Re: Permissions, "soft read failure" - wishful thinking?