On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 3:59 PM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote: > I haven't yet formed a complete thought here but is there any reason we cannot convert the permission-like attributes to predefined roles? > > pg_login > pg_replication > pg_bypassrls > pg_createdb > pg_createrole > pg_haspassword (password and valid until) > pg_hasconnlimit > > Presently, attributes are never inherited, but having that be controlled via the INHERIT property of the grant seems desirable.
I think that something like this might be possible, but I'm not convinced that it's a good idea.
Either way, I'm not quite sure what the benefit of converting these things to predefined roles is.
Specifically, you gain inheritance/set and "admin option" for free. So whether I have an ability and whether I can grant it are separate concerns.
A password is a fine example of that. You should never inherit someone else's password. Whether we've chosen the right set of things to treat as per-role properties rather than predefined roles is very much debatable, though, as are a number of other aspects of the role system.
You aren't inheriting a specific password, you are inheriting the right to have a password stored in the database, with an optional expiration date.
For instance, I'm pretty well unconvinced that merging users and groups into a uniformed thing called roles was a good idea.
I agree. No one was interested in the, admittedly complex, psql queries I wrote the other month but I decided to undo some of that decision there.
