Basic schema usage question

Question

I have an application, called APP and I have two users USER1 and USER2. I create a Role called APP_USER. I assign USER1 and USER2 to the APP_USER Role.
I log into oracle using APP and create all of the tables/views/stored procedures, etc. I grant SELECT permissions to all of the tables in my APP schema to the APP_USER role.
I then log into Oracle using USER1. In order to select data from my APP do I always have to do a 'Select * from APP.tablename' or is there some automatic way to say that when I log in as USER1, I already know about all of the tables in the APP schema and I simply enter 'Select * from tablename' (without the APP. used).
If there is a way to automatically know that using tablename means to look in the APP schema we would like to know what that is. Since our application is dynamically creating and dropping tables along the way, we would like to have some way for this to happen automatically so that USER1 and USER2 (or the role APP_USER) is always aware of the changes to the APP schema.
We figure there has to be an easy and dynamic way that this occurs in oracle, but we can't seem to find any specific documentation on how this would happen.

Answer 1

You can use either Views or synonms. For synonyms, you can create synonyms for the tables in the APP schema. These can either be public synonyms - meaning you do it once for all users, or they are private synonyms - meaning you define it for each user. With views, you can create the view in each user account. You can also modify the view definition when the tables change underneath without having to change the queries.
Not sure why you are creating and destroying so many tables - you may want to investigate the use of temporary tables. Nevertheless, to keep your synonyms and tables in synch, you will need to issue the appropriate calls to create and drop the synonyms when you are creating and dropping the tables.