AUTHID CURRENT_USER

Question

Hi,
What is the difference between two..
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION func_temp
RETURN NUMBER
AUTHID CURRENT_USER
AS
BEGIN
RETURN 1;
END;
and
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION func_temp
RETURN NUMBER
AS
BEGIN
RETURN 1;
END;
Please tell me what its the use of AUTHID CURRENT_USER here.
Thanks,
Vinod

Answer 1

By default, stored procedures and SQL methods execute with the privileges of their owner, not their current user. Such definer's rights subprograms are bound to the schema in which they reside, allowing you to refer to objects in the same schema without qualifying their names. For example, if schemas HR and OE both have a table called departments, a procedure owned by HR can refer to departments rather than HR.departments. If user OE calls HR's procedure, the procedure still accesses the departments table owned by HR.
If you compile the same procedure in both schemas, you can define the schema name as a variable in SQL*Plus and refer to the table like &schema..departments. The code is portable, but if you change it, you must recompile it in each schema.
A more maintainable way is to use the AUTHID clause, which makes stored procedures and SQL methods execute with the privileges and schema context of the calling user. You can create one instance of the procedure, and many users can call it to access their own data.