[postgis-devel] [PostGIS] #1813: geometry_columns / geography_column table fails to take into account user permissions to table

[PostGIS]

#1813: geometry_columns / geography_column  table fails to take into account user
permissions to table
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 Reporter:  chander  |       Owner:  pramsey      
     Type:  defect   |      Status:  new          
 Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:  PostGIS 2.0.1
Component:  postgis  |     Version:  2.0.x        
 Keywords:           |  
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Comment(by chander):

 Just to rephrase the previous comment of strk (without the double
 negative):

 I would like to find information about spatial tables that exist but are
 not visible with my search_path. What's the rationale for that ? Are there
 other examples in the standard catalogues ?
 --

 It seems to me that logically, the geometry_columns table should follow
 the conventions used by other metadata commands (like \dt, etc.)

 The /dt meta-command, or any of the "describe" type commands for example -
 show you the tables that are visible to your current user.  Various tools
 get confused if you don't do this.  A great example is pgsql2shp - which
 breaks because it queries spatial_ref_sys using only the table name, and
 expects the search_path to be respected (which would result, for example,
 in a table not appearing twice in two different schemas.)

 Also, tools like pgsql2shp, django (introspection), and others break if
 two tables with the same name exist in a single database, because they
 expect that a query of spatial_ref_sys will only show visible table
 information.

 Consider a tool that queries the geometry_columns table to get a list of
 available tables with geometry data.  Is it reasonable to present those
 tables to the tool if the user won't be able to view them anyway (or
 shouldn't be able to view them?)

 The general expectation (when querying geometry_columns) of tools that
 query this table, IMHO is that they will see tables that are visible to
 the current logged_in user.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/1813#comment:3>
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