When it comes to managing user access in SQL Server, it’s important to ensure that users have the appropriate level of permissions without granting them unnecessary access. In many environments, default database roles such as db_owner, db_datareader, and db_datawriter are used to grant access to users. However, these roles often provide more access than required.
Luckily, SQL Server offers simple commands to grant and remove access, namely:
- GRANT – gives a user permission to perform certain tasks on database objects
- DENY – denies any access to a user to perform certain tasks on database objects
- REVOKE – removes a grant or deny permission from a user on certain database objects
Let’s take a look at some examples of how these commands can be used:
GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, SELECT ON Customers TO Joe, Mary
REVOKE UPDATE ON Customers TO Joe
DENY DELETE ON Customers TO Joe, Mary
GRANT EXEC ON uspInsertCustomers TO Joe
As you can see, granting, denying, and revoking access is straightforward. You can specify the specific tasks and objects for which you want to grant or revoke access.
To determine the rights that have been granted in a database, you can use the sp_helprotect stored procedure.
In addition to granting rights to objects that you create, you can also grant users permissions to perform other tasks such as creating tables, views, and stored procedures. For example, to grant a user permission to create a table, you would run the following command:
GRANT CREATE TABLE TO Joe
It’s important to take the time to understand the specific permissions needed by the database users and grant, deny, and revoke accordingly, rather than relying solely on the default database roles.
By carefully managing user access and permissions, you can ensure the security and integrity of your SQL Server environment.