Setting permissions individually for each user of a database can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. For most databases, permission management based on groups, rather than on individual user IDs, is a much more efficient approach.

Each user ID can be a member of multiple groups, and they inherit the inheritable permissions from each of the groups. For example, you may create groups for different departments in a company database (sales, marketing, and so on) and assign these groups permissions. Each salesperson becomes a member of the sales group, and automatically gains access to the appropriate areas of the database.

Members of a group can inherit only the following permissions for the group they belong to:

• ALL
• ALTER
• DELETE
• INSERT
• REFERENCES
• SELECT
• UPDATE

For tables and views, you can grant the user or group the permission to grant the same permission to other users. This permission to grant the same permission to other users is not inherited by the members of the group.

 See also