Simple Q re schemas and users

Hello everyone,

you will see from my question that I'm not an Oracle expert.

How can I make many DB users access the same set of tables without qualifying each access with the name of the schema containing the tables?

I have one user MASTER which creates all the tables (thus all tables end up in the MASTER schema), and many other users (some of them created later at run-time) accessing the tables (sometimes via DML statements, sometimes via stored procedures). The users maintain no other data besides that in the MASTER schema's tables, i.e. there are no tables in all those user schemas. The users need to prefix the table names, like MASTER.sometable. I feel that this is not the proper way to do that, but what is the recommended way?

Should I create a public synonym (or one private synonym in each user schema) for every table name?

Is it possible to create the other users in the MASTER schema in the first place (which might create security problems - would GRANTs still provide protection within one common schema?)?

• And one more related question about packages: Do packages exist within a schema or besides the schemas? I.e. does the package_name.package_member access syntax have to be prefixed with a schema name when used from another schema?

Thanks for your help,

-- 
Dr. Holger Peine
Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany
Phone +49-6301-707-134, Fax -209 (shared)
www.iese.fraunhofer.de/Staff/peine -- PGP key on request or via pgp.mit.edu