Re: predefined role(s) for VACUUM and ANALYZE

On Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 01:54:38PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> I think we're down to 0 remaining now, so it'd be hard to justify
> consuming 2 of 0 remaining bits.

AFAICT there are 2 remaining. N_ACL_RIGHTS is only 14.

> However, I maintain that the solution
> to this is either (1) change the aclitem representation to get another
> 32 bits or (2) invent a different system for less-commonly used
> permission bits. Checking permissions for SELECT or UPDATE has to be
> really fast, because most queries will need to do that sort of thing.
> If we represented VACUUM or ANALYZE in some other way in the catalogs
> that was more scalable but less efficient, it wouldn't be a big deal
> (although there's the issue of code duplication to consider).

Perhaps we could add something like a relacl_ext column to affected
catalogs with many more than 32 privilege bits. However, if we actually do
have 2 bits remaining, we wouldn't need to do that work now unless someone
else uses them first. That being said, it's certainly worth thinking about
the future of this stuff.

--
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com