Thread

1. Proposal: DROP ROLE ... REASSIGN OWNED TO ...

   Zach Manifold <zachlweaver00@gmail.com> — 2026-04-23T06:59:19Z

   Hi all,
   
   First-time hacker here wanting to get into the community.
   
   I am proposing a fairly small quality of life feature for
   role management which is to allow users to reassign
   ownership within the same command as dropping
   a role.
   
   Currently you must reassign ownership prior to dropping
   a role (if it owns anything) such as:
   REASSIGN OWNED BY role1 [, ...]TO role2;
   DROP ROLE role1;
   
   I am thinking of the usage:
   DROP ROLE role1 [, ...] REASSIGN OWNED TO role2;
   
   Original behavior would remain if not specifying the option:
   DROP ROLE role1 [, ...];
   
   For the implementation, I was thinking of adding a
   RoleSpec into DropRoleStmt to hold the "assigned to role"
   which would be NULL unless otherwise provided by the option.
   The grammar for DropRoleStmt would be updated to add a
   new option (opt_reassign) to optionally provide the RoleSpec.
   There are other cases in the DropRoleStmt grammar such as
   users and groups - I'm wondering if this would apply to those
   as well (e.g., DROP USER ..., DROP GROUP ...)
   
   Within the DropRole command (after all the initial validity checks,)
   I was thinking to check if this value was non-null and create
   a ReassignOwnedStmt before making a call to ReassignOwnedObjects
   before the foreach loop is called to actually remove the list of roles.
   
   My one concern is the possible failure mode - is it possible for
   the reassignment to work but the role to fail to drop? Is this
   preventable? I'm not sure how to "cleanly" approach this type
   of safety where I can assure that both of these operations
   must succeed rather than reassigning ownership and failing
   to drop a role.
   
   Are there any other failure modes I should be considering?
   
   Would like to hear from anyone if there's any appetite for this and
   your thoughts on how this can be approached.
   
   Regards,
   - Zach Weaver
   
   
   
   

2. Re: Proposal: DROP ROLE ... REASSIGN OWNED TO ...

   Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2026-04-25T00:29:43Z

   On Thu, Apr 23, 2026 at 2:59 AM Zach Manifold <zachlweaver00@gmail.com> wrote:
   > My one concern is the possible failure mode - is it possible for
   > the reassignment to work but the role to fail to drop? Is this
   > preventable? I'm not sure how to "cleanly" approach this type
   > of safety where I can assure that both of these operations
   > must succeed rather than reassigning ownership and failing
   > to drop a role.
   
   There's no problem of this type -- the whole statement would execute
   as a single transaction, and any failure would role the whole thing
   back.
   
   But I'm a little bit skeptical of the underlying proposal for related
   reasons. This doesn't really let you do anything that you can't easily
   do already:
   
   rhaas=# create role joe;
   CREATE ROLE
   rhaas=# begin;
   BEGIN
   rhaas=*# reassign owned by joe to fred;
   REASSIGN OWNED
   rhaas=*# drop role joe;
   DROP ROLE
   rhaas=*# commit;
   COMMIT
   
   This would fail if the user to be dropped owned objects in another
   database, but your hypothetical version of DROP ROLE would have that
   issue, too. Even if you couldn't wrap both commands in a single
   transaction -- we have some DDL commands that are like that -- running
   them one after another wouldn't lose much. So I'm just not sure I
   really see the point. If we add a bunch of stuff like this, it will
   take work to maintain, but most users won't be able to remember all
   the variations that exist at the moment when they might benefit from
   them. We might also end up with a patchwork where some things are
   supported and seemingly related things are not supported, just because
   of the idiosyncrasies of what got implemented and what didn't. I'm not
   saying nobody would ever benefit from something like this -- probably
   some people would -- but I don't know that there would be all that
   many of them or that the benefit would be all that much.
   
   -- 
   Robert Haas
   EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
   
   
   
   

3. Re: Proposal: DROP ROLE ... REASSIGN OWNED TO ...

   Zach Manifold <zachlweaver00@gmail.com> — 2026-04-25T00:41:50Z

   > If we add a bunch of stuff like this, it will
   > take work to maintain, but most users won't be able to remember all
   > the variations that exist at the moment when they might benefit from
   > them.
   
   That's a fair point. I agree the value add is fairly minimal, since my
   intention was a tiny quality of life enhancement, but to your point
   if there are different variations of doing the same thing it can either
   end up being confusing or not utilized.
   
   Thanks for reviewing.
   
   - Zach Weaver
   
   On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 5:29 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
   
   > On Thu, Apr 23, 2026 at 2:59 AM Zach Manifold <zachlweaver00@gmail.com>
   > wrote:
   > > My one concern is the possible failure mode - is it possible for
   > > the reassignment to work but the role to fail to drop? Is this
   > > preventable? I'm not sure how to "cleanly" approach this type
   > > of safety where I can assure that both of these operations
   > > must succeed rather than reassigning ownership and failing
   > > to drop a role.
   >
   > There's no problem of this type -- the whole statement would execute
   > as a single transaction, and any failure would role the whole thing
   > back.
   >
   > But I'm a little bit skeptical of the underlying proposal for related
   > reasons. This doesn't really let you do anything that you can't easily
   > do already:
   >
   > rhaas=# create role joe;
   > CREATE ROLE
   > rhaas=# begin;
   > BEGIN
   > rhaas=*# reassign owned by joe to fred;
   > REASSIGN OWNED
   > rhaas=*# drop role joe;
   > DROP ROLE
   > rhaas=*# commit;
   > COMMIT
   >
   > This would fail if the user to be dropped owned objects in another
   > database, but your hypothetical version of DROP ROLE would have that
   > issue, too. Even if you couldn't wrap both commands in a single
   > transaction -- we have some DDL commands that are like that -- running
   > them one after another wouldn't lose much. So I'm just not sure I
   > really see the point. If we add a bunch of stuff like this, it will
   > take work to maintain, but most users won't be able to remember all
   > the variations that exist at the moment when they might benefit from
   > them. We might also end up with a patchwork where some things are
   > supported and seemingly related things are not supported, just because
   > of the idiosyncrasies of what got implemented and what didn't. I'm not
   > saying nobody would ever benefit from something like this -- probably
   > some people would -- but I don't know that there would be all that
   > many of them or that the benefit would be all that much.
   >
   > --
   > Robert Haas
   > EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
   >
   

4. Re: Proposal: DROP ROLE ... REASSIGN OWNED TO ...

   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> — 2026-04-25T01:12:56Z

   Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
   > This would fail if the user to be dropped owned objects in another
   > database, but your hypothetical version of DROP ROLE would have that
   > issue, too. Even if you couldn't wrap both commands in a single
   > transaction -- we have some DDL commands that are like that -- running
   > them one after another wouldn't lose much. So I'm just not sure I
   > really see the point.
   
   Yeah.  We intentionally separated this functionality because the
   expectation is that you'll likely have to do REASSIGN OWNED in
   multiple databases before DROP ROLE will succeed.  So I'm not
   much in favor of adding a combined command; it will just lead
   people to try to do things that won't work.
   
   			regards, tom lane