Creating objects only with role grants.

Question

Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm having a problem to compile some procedures in a scheme, let's call it scheme A.
This scheme A is receiving privileges to execute a function(B.get_date) of other scheme, let's call it scheme B, through a role B_STUFF.
When I try to compile a procedure from scheme A that uses the function B.get_date, it doesn't compile because there are
insufficient privileges for scheme A to execute that function, but I already gave that privilege through the role B_STUFF.
Nevertheless it only works when I give direct grant execute on function B.get_date to schema A.
Here is the example of my problem:
create function B.get_date return date
is
Begin
return sysdate;
end;
grant execute on function B.get_date to B_STUFF;
grant B_STUFF to A;
create procedure A.proc
is
begin
....uses the function B.get_date....
end;
Invalid object.
Is there a way to do this without having to give direct privilege of an object to a schema?
Thanks for the attention...
Regards...

Answer 1

Is there a way? Yes. But it's probably not what you want...
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  create or replace procedure a.proc
  2    authid current_user
  3  is
  4    l_dt date;
  5  begin
  6    execute immediate 'select b.get_date from dual' into l_dt;
  7    dbms_output.put_line( l_dt );
  8* end;
SQL> /
Procedure created.
SQL> set serveroutput on;
SQL> exec a.proc;
06-FEB-13
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.will work. Any user that wants to execute the A.PROC procedure will need to have the ability to call B.GET_DATE (either directly or via a role).
In general, since roles can be enabled or disabled in a session, password protected, made default or non-default, etc. you can't use them when you're creating persistent objects. Otherwise, if A has two sessions open and in one session B_STUFF is enabled and in the other the role is disabled, Oracle would have a very hard time figuring out whether the A.PROC procedure should be valid or not. And then what happens when both of those sessions are terminated-- which set of roles should Oracle then use for A's persistent objects? That's why Oracle generally depends on privileges that are granted directly to a user when you're trying to create persistent objects.
Justin