grants and functions

Hi All,

I've been trying to figure this out and reading this list on this subject.

I have a view that shows a user a lot of intresting info. Now, on a
normal view, that does not call any functions, I can give my user select
rights and he/she can see all the info, without me having to to grant
any rights on underlying tables.

The PUBLIC also has execute rights on all functions I've defined by
default, so far so good. But now, If I grant a USER SELECT on a VIEW
that uses a pl/pgsql function, for some reason, The normal inheritance
of permissions is lost as I've become used to.

Now I could define my FUNCTION with SECURITY DEFINER, which will
probably work around the problem, since this will give the USER database
owner privileges. Also, I could give the USER select rights on the
underlying tables, but there was a reason I only wanted him/her to see
the database via the VIEW I created, and there are a lot of tables involved.

Has anybody found a way around this? Is this a bug, a documented
shortcoming, or just a feature of PostgreSQL (at version 8.1)?

--
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Remco Post

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