Re: equivalent of su in oracle?

Richard Chen wrote:
> Does anyone know a way in oracle to let the system user become any user
> without knowing the users' password?

Any Oracle user that has the "BECOME USER" right can do this. "BECOME USER" is part of the role "IMP_FULL_DATABASE", which again is included in the "DBA" role.

IMP_FULL_DATABASE has this right because you need this functionality when you restore a database from an export file, the file contains objects of many users, yet you don't need to type the passwords for all these users.

The BECOME_USER right gives you the ability to execute the

        ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA = <schemaname>

Beware 1: your login(username) wil not change, only your schema.

	The data dictionary views (e.g. USER_TABLES) reflect the
	status for the user that is logged in.

Beware 2: This command is undocumented and supposed to be used only
	by the IMP command.

Erwin

-- 
Erwin Dondorp
<http://www.dondorp.com/>