Re: How Do I use Become User System Privileges

Good question. "BECOME USER" (actually, ALTER SESSION SET DEFAULT USER=whatever, or something like that) will set the default_user (? default_schema?) column in the V$SESSIONS table. This is where IMPORT gets the owner name from when it's creating objects. Unfortunately, "BECOME USER" doesn't actually change who is connected, it only changes the value of the default_user column in V$SESSIONS. (And Oracle states that they don't actually *support* the use of the ALTER SESSION SET DEFAULT USER statement anyway.) The only way to do the equivalent of su in Unix is "connect username/password_at_connect_string".

If you're a DBA, there is a way to capture the encrypted value of a user's password, change it to something you know, connect as them, do whatever, then set the password back to it's original encrypted value, but I'm not tellin'.....(OK, if you email me, maybe I'll tell :=)

Regards!

--
David C. Sisk
The Unofficial ORACLE on NT site
http://www.ipass.net/~davesisk/oont.htm

Gary wrote in message <3785079A.11B11918_at_kma.com>...
>I am new to Oracle and I have a question that is probably real simple
>but I can't find any documentation on it.
>I can see from the documentation that you can assign to a User the
>System Privilege "Become User" but there is
>not a lot of information about what the "Become User" Privilege does or
>how to actualy become a user. Can
>anyone help. How does one become a user when connected as another user
>with the privilege? Can this be done
>from SQL Worksheet?
>
>Thanks,
>Gary
>
>
Received on Sun Jul 11 1999 - 21:38:13 CDT