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Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 17:58:12 +0200 (CEST)
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: System catalog representation of access privileges
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Oldtimers might recall the last thread about enhancements of the access
privilege system.  See

http://www.postgresql.org/mhonarc/pgsql-hackers/2000-05/msg01220.html

to catch up.

It was more or less agreed that privilege descriptors should be split out
into a separate table for better flexibility and ease of processing.  The
dispute was that the old proposal wanted to store only one privilege per
row.  I have devised something more efficient:

pg_privilege (
    priobj oid,			-- oid of table, column, function, etc.
    prigrantor oid,		-- user who granted the privilege
    prigrantee oid,		-- user who owns the privilege

    priselect char,		-- specific privileges follow...
    prihierarchy char,
    priinsert char,
    priupdate char,
    pridelete char,
    prireferences char,
    priunder char,
    pritrigger char,
    prirule char
    /* obvious extension mechanism... */
)

The various "char" fields would be NULL for not granted, some character
for granted, and some other character for granted with grant option (a
poor man's enum, if you will).  Votes on the particular characters are
being taken.  ;-)  Since NULLs are stored specially, sparse pg_privilege
rows wouldn't take extra space.

"Usage" privileges on types and other non-table objects could probably be
lumped under "priselect" (purely for internal purposes).

For access we define system caches on these indexes:

index ( priobj, prigrantee, priselect )
index ( priobj, prigrantee, prihierarchy )
index ( priobj, prigrantee, priinsert )
index ( priobj, prigrantee, priupdate )
index ( priobj, prigrantee, pridelete )

These are the privileges you usually need quickly during query processing,
the others are only needed during table creation.  These indexes are not
unique (more than one grantor can grant the same privilege), but AFAICS
the syscache interface should work okay with this, since in normal
operation we don't care who granted the privilege, only whether you have
at least one.

How does that look?

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter


From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7738@postgresql.org Thu Apr 19 16:28:19 2001
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From: "Ross J. Reedstrom" <reedstrm@rice.edu>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges
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So, this will remove the relacl field from pg_class, making pg_class
a fixed tuple-length table: that might actually speed access: there
are shortcircuits in place to speed pointer math when this is true.

The implementation looks fine to me, as well. How are group privileges
going to be handled with this system?

Ross

On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 05:58:12PM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Oldtimers might recall the last thread about enhancements of the access
> privilege system.  See
> 
> http://www.postgresql.org/mhonarc/pgsql-hackers/2000-05/msg01220.html
> 
> to catch up.
> 
> It was more or less agreed that privilege descriptors should be split out
> into a separate table for better flexibility and ease of processing.  The
> dispute was that the old proposal wanted to store only one privilege per
> row.  I have devised something more efficient:
> 
> pg_privilege (

<snip>


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7737@postgresql.org Thu Apr 19 16:22:45 2001
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges
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Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> I have devised something more efficient:
> 
> pg_privilege (
>     priobj oid,                 -- oid of table, column, etc.
>     prigrantor oid,             -- user who granted the privilege
>     prigrantee oid,             -- user who owns the privilege
> 
>     priselect char,             -- specific privileges follow...
>     prihierarchy char,
>     priinsert char,
>     priupdate char,
>     pridelete char,
>     prireferences char,
>     priunder char,
>     pritrigger char,
>     prirule char
>     /* obvious extension mechanism... */
> )
>
> "Usage" privileges on types and other non-table objects could probably be
> lumped under "priselect" (purely for internal purposes).
> 

That looks quite nice. I do have 3 quick questions though. First, I
assume that the prigrantee could also be a group id? Or would this
system table represent the effective privileges granted to user via
groups? Second, one nice feature of Oracle is the ability to GRANT roles
(our groups) to other roles. So I could do:

CREATE ROLE clerk;
GRANT SELECT on mascarm.deposits TO clerk;
GRANT UPDATE (mascarm.deposits.amount) ON mascarm.deposits TO clerk;

CREATE ROLE banker;
GRANT clerk TO banker;

Would any part of your design prohibit such functionality in the future?

Finally, I'm wondering if "Usage" or "System" privileges should be
another system table. For example, one day I would like to (as in
Oracle):

GRANT SELECT ANY TABLE TO foo WITH ADMIN;
GRANT CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM TO foo;
GRANT DROP ANY TABLE TO foo;

Presumably, in your design, the above would be represented by 3 records
with something like the following values:

This would be a "SELECT ANY TABLE" privilege (w/Admin):

NULL, grantor_oid, grantee_oid, 'S', NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, ...

This would be a "CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM" privilege:

NULL, grantor_oid, grantee_oid, 'c', NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, ...

That means that the system would need an index as:

index ( prigrantee, priselect )

While I'm not arguing it won't work, it just doesn't "seem" clean to
shoe-horn the system privileges into the same table as the object
privileges.

I've been wrong before though :-)

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7740@postgresql.org Thu Apr 19 17:17:08 2001
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Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 23:24:51 +0200 (CEST)
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Mike Mascari <mascarm@mascari.com>
cc: PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges
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Mike Mascari writes:

> That looks quite nice. I do have 3 quick questions though. First, I
> assume that the prigrantee could also be a group id?

Yes.  It was also suggested making two different grantee columns for users
and groups, but I'm not yet convinced of that.  It's an option though.

> Second, one nice feature of Oracle is the ability to GRANT roles
> (our groups) to other roles.

Roles are not part of this deal, although I agree that they would be nice
to have eventually.  I'm not sure yet whether role grants would get a
different system table, but I'm leaning there.

> Would any part of your design prohibit such functionality in the future?

Not that I can see.

> Finally, I'm wondering if "Usage" or "System" privileges should be
> another system table. For example, one day I would like to (as in
> Oracle):
>
> GRANT SELECT ANY TABLE TO foo WITH ADMIN;

ANY TABLE probably implies "any table in this schema/database", no?  In
that case the grant record would refer to the oid of the schema/database.
Is there any use distinguishing between ANY TABLE and ANY VIEW?  That
would make it a bit trickier.

> GRANT CREATE PUBLIC SYNONYM TO foo;

I'm not familiar with that above command.

> GRANT DROP ANY TABLE TO foo;

I'm not sold on a DROP privilege, but a CREATE privilege would be another
column.  I didn't include it here because it's not in SQL.

> While I'm not arguing it won't work, it just doesn't "seem" clean to
> shoe-horn the system privileges into the same table as the object
> privileges.

It would make sense to split privileges on tables from privileges on
schemas/databases from privileges on, say, functions, etc.  E.g.,

pg_privtable	-- like proposed

pg_privschema (
    priobj oid, prigrantor oid, prigrantee oid,
    char pritarget,	-- 't' = any table, 'v' = any view, ...
    char priselect,
    char priupdate,
    /* etc */
)

But this would mean that a check like "can I select from this table"
would possibly require lookups in two tables.  Not sure how much of a
tradeoff that is, but the "shoehorn factor" would be lower.

Comments on this?

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7741@postgresql.org Thu Apr 19 18:12:56 2001
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To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges 
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Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> pg_privilege (
>     priobj oid,			-- oid of table, column, function, etc.
>     prigrantor oid,		-- user who granted the privilege
>     prigrantee oid,		-- user who owns the privilege

What about groups?  What about wildcards?  We already allow
"grant <priv> to PUBLIC (all)", and it would be nice to be able to do
something like "grant <on everything I own> to joeblow"

> Since NULLs are stored specially, sparse pg_privilege
> rows wouldn't take extra space.

Unless there get to be a very large number of privilege bits, it'd
probably be better to handle these columns as NOT NULL, so that a fixed
C struct record could be mapped onto the tuples.  You'll notice that
most of the other system tables are done that way.

Alternatively, since you really only need two bits per privilege,
perhaps a pair of BIT (VARYING?) fields would be a more effective
approach.  BIT VARYING would have the nice property that adding a new
privilege type doesn't force initdb.

> For access we define system caches on these indexes:

> index ( priobj, prigrantee, priselect )
> index ( priobj, prigrantee, prihierarchy )
> index ( priobj, prigrantee, priinsert )
> index ( priobj, prigrantee, priupdate )
> index ( priobj, prigrantee, pridelete )

Using the privilege bits as part of the index won't work if you intend
to allow them to be null.  Another objection is that this would end up
caching multiple copies of the same tuple.  A third is that you can't
readily tell lack of an entry (implying you should use a default ACL
setting, which might allow the access) from presence of an entry denying
the access.  A fourth is it doesn't work for groups or wildcards.

> These indexes are not
> unique (more than one grantor can grant the same privilege), but AFAICS
> the syscache interface should work okay with this,

Unfortunately not.  The syscache stuff needs unique indexes, because it
can only return one tuple for any given request.

I don't really believe this indexing scheme is workable.  Need to think
some more.  Possibly the syscache mechanism will not do, and we need a
specially indexed privilege cache instead.

			regards, tom lane

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7743@postgresql.org Thu Apr 19 18:47:11 2001
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From: Mike Mascari <mascarm@mascari.com>
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges
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First, let me say that just because Oracle does it this way doesn't make
it better but...

Oracle divides privileges into 2 categories:

Object privileges
System privileges

The Object privileges are the ones you describe. And I agree
fundamentally with your design. Although I would have (a) used a bitmask
for the privileges and (b) have an additional bitmask which determines
whether or not the Grantee could turn around and grant the same
permission to someone else:

pg_objprivs {
	priobj oid,
	prigrantor oid,
	prigrantee oid,
	priprivileges int4,
	priadmin int4
};

Where priprivileges is a bitmask for:

0 ALTER - tables, sequences
1 DELETE - tables, views	
2 EXECUTE - procedures, functions
3 INDEX - tables
4 INSERT - tables, views
5 REFERENCES - tables
6 SELECT - tables, views, sequences
7 UPDATE - tables, views
8 HIERARCHY - tables
9 UNDER - tables

And the priadmin is a bitmask to determine whether or not the Grantee
could grant the same privilege to another user. Since these are Object
privileges, 32 bits should be enough (and also 640K RAM ;-)).

The System privileges are privileges granted to a user or role (a.k.a
group) which are not associated with any particular object. This is one
area where I think PostgreSQL needs a lot of work and thought,
particularly with schemas coming down the road. Some example Oracle
System privileges are:

Typical User Privileges:
-----------------------

CREATE SESSION - Allows the user to connect 
CREATE SEQUENCE - Allows the user to create sequences in his schema
CREATE SYNONYM - Allows the user to create private synonyms
CREATE TABLE - Allows the user to create a table in his schema
CREATE TRIGGER - Allows the user to create triggers on tables in his
schema
CREATE VIEW - Allows the user to create views in his schema

Typical Power-User Privileges:
-----------------------------

ALTER ANY INDEX - Allows user to alter an index in *any* schema
ALTER ANY PROCEDURE - Allows user to alter a procedure in *any* schema
ALTER ANY TABLE - Allows user to alter a table in *any* schema
...
CREATE ANY TABLE - Allows user to create a table in *any* schema
COMMENT ANY TABLE - Allows user to document any table in *any* schema
...

Typical DBA-Only Privileges:
---------------------------

ALTER USER - Allows user to change password, quotas, etc. for *any* user
CREATE USER - Allows user to create a new user
DROP USER - Allows user to drop a new user
GRANT ANY PRIVILEGE - Allows user to grant any privilege to any user
ANALYZE ANY - Allows user to analyze any table in *any* schema

There are, in fact, many, many more System Privileges that Oracle
defines. You may want someone to connect to a database and query one
table and that's it. Or you may want someone to have no other abilities
except to document the database design via the great COMMENT ON command
;-), etc. 

So for System Privileges, I would have something like:

pg_sysprivs {
	prigrantee oid,
	priprivilege oid,
	prigroup bool,
	priadmin bool
};

So each System privilege granted to a user (or group) would be its own
record. The priprivilege would be the OID of one of the many System
privileges defined in the same way types are defined, if prigroup is
false. If prigroup is true, however, then priprivilege is not a System
privilege, but a group id. And then PostgreSQL will have to examine the
privileges recursively for that group. Of course, you might not want to
allow for the GRANTing of group privileges to other groups initially,
which simplifies the implementation tremendously. But its a neat (if not
complicated) Oracle-ism.

Unfortunately, this means that the permission might require > 2 lookups.
But these lookups are only if the previous lookup failed:

SELECT * FROM employees.foo;

1. Am I a member of the employees schema? Yes -> Done
2. Have I been GRANTed the Object Privilege of:
   SELECT on employees.foo? Yes -> Done
3. Have I been GRANTed the System Privilege of:
   SELECT ANY TABLE? Yes -> Done

So the number of lookups does potentially increase, but only for those
users that have been granted access through greater and greater layers
of authority. 

I just think that each new feature added to PostgreSQL opens up a very
large can of worms. Schemas are such a feature and the security system
should be prepared for it.

FWIW,

Mike Mascari
mascarm@mascari.com


Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> 
> 
> It would make sense to split privileges on tables from privileges on
> schemas/databases from privileges on, say, functions, etc.  E.g.,
> 
> pg_privtable    -- like proposed
> 
> pg_privschema (
>     priobj oid, prigrantor oid, prigrantee oid,
>     char pritarget,     -- 't' = any table, 'v' = any view, ...
>     char priselect,
>     char priupdate,
>     /* etc */
> )
> 
> But this would mean that a check like "can I select from this table"
> would possibly require lookups in two tables.  Not sure how much of a
> tradeoff that is, but the "shoehorn factor" would be lower.
> 
> Comments on this?
> 
> --
> Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M7759@postgresql.org Fri Apr 20 11:25:24 2001
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Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:31:16 +0200 (CEST)
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
cc: PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges 
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Tom Lane writes:

> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> > pg_privilege (
> >     priobj oid,			-- oid of table, column, function, etc.
> >     prigrantor oid,		-- user who granted the privilege
> >     prigrantee oid,		-- user who owns the privilege
>
> What about groups?

Either integrated into prigrantee or another column prigroupgrantee.  One
of these would always be zero or null, that's why I'm not sure if this
isn't a waste of space.

> What about wildcards?  We already allow
> "grant <priv> to PUBLIC (all)", and it would be nice to be able to do
> something like "grant <on everything I own> to joeblow"

Public would be prigrantee == 0.  About <everything I own>, how is this
defined?  If it is "everything I own and will ever own" then I suppose
priobj == 0.  Although I admit I have never seen this kind of privilege
before.  It's probably better to set up a group for that.

> Alternatively, since you really only need two bits per privilege,
> perhaps a pair of BIT (VARYING?) fields would be a more effective
> approach.  BIT VARYING would have the nice property that adding a new
> privilege type doesn't force initdb.

This would be tricky to index, I think.

> I don't really believe this indexing scheme is workable.  Need to think
> some more.  Possibly the syscache mechanism will not do, and we need a
> specially indexed privilege cache instead.

Maybe just an index on (object, grantee) and walk through that with an
index scan.  This is done in some other places as well (triggers, I
recall), but the performance is probably not too exciting.

However, last I looked at the syscache I figured that it would be
perfectly capable of handling non-unique indexes if there only was an API
to retrieve those values.  Storing and finding the entries didn't seem to
be the problem.  Need to look there, probably.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter


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To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] System catalog representation of access privileges 
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	message dated "Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:31:16 +0200"
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 12:35:46 -0400
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Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
>> Alternatively, since you really only need two bits per privilege,
>> perhaps a pair of BIT (VARYING?) fields would be a more effective
>> approach.  BIT VARYING would have the nice property that adding a new
>> privilege type doesn't force initdb.

> This would be tricky to index, I think.

True, but I don't believe that making the privilege value part of the
index is useful.

> Maybe just an index on (object, grantee) and walk through that with an
> index scan.  This is done in some other places as well (triggers, I
> recall), but the performance is probably not too exciting.

I agree, that'd be slower than we'd like.  It needs to be cached somehow.

The major problem is that you'd need multiple index scans: after failing
to find anything for (table, currentuser) you'd also need to try
(table, 0) for PUBLIC and (table, G) for every group G that contains the
current user.  Not to mention the scan to find out which groups those are.

It gets rapidly worse if you want to allow any wildcarding on the object
--- for example, if a privilege record attached to a schema can allow
access to the tables therein, which I think should be possible.  You'd
have to repeat the above for each possible priobject that might relate
to the target object.

I think this might be tolerable for getting the info in the first place,
but the final results really need to be cached.  That's why I was
wondering about a special "privilege cache".

> However, last I looked at the syscache I figured that it would be
> perfectly capable of handling non-unique indexes if there only was an API
> to retrieve those values.

Yes, it's an API problem more than anything else.  Invent away, if that
seems like a needed component.

			regards, tom lane

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