1CREATE ROLE(7)           PostgreSQL 14.3 Documentation          CREATE ROLE(7)
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NAME

6       CREATE_ROLE - define a new database role
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SYNOPSIS

9       CREATE ROLE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]
10
11       where option can be:
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13             SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
14           | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
15           | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
16           | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
17           | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
18           | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
19           | BYPASSRLS | NOBYPASSRLS
20           | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
21           | [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password' | PASSWORD NULL
22           | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
23           | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
24           | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
25           | ROLE role_name [, ...]
26           | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
27           | USER role_name [, ...]
28           | SYSID uid
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DESCRIPTION

31       CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a PostgreSQL database cluster. A role is
32       an entity that can own database objects and have database privileges; a
33       role can be considered a “user”, a “group”, or both depending on how it
34       is used. Refer to Chapter 22 and Chapter 21 for information about
35       managing users and authentication. You must have CREATEROLE privilege
36       or be a database superuser to use this command.
37
38       Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and so are
39       valid in all databases in the cluster.
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PARAMETERS

42       name
43           The name of the new role.
44
45       SUPERUSER
46       NOSUPERUSER
47           These clauses determine whether the new role is a “superuser”, who
48           can override all access restrictions within the database. Superuser
49           status is dangerous and should be used only when really needed. You
50           must yourself be a superuser to create a new superuser. If not
51           specified, NOSUPERUSER is the default.
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53       CREATEDB
54       NOCREATEDB
55           These clauses define a role's ability to create databases. If
56           CREATEDB is specified, the role being defined will be allowed to
57           create new databases. Specifying NOCREATEDB will deny a role the
58           ability to create databases. If not specified, NOCREATEDB is the
59           default.
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61       CREATEROLE
62       NOCREATEROLE
63           These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to create
64           new roles (that is, execute CREATE ROLE). A role with CREATEROLE
65           privilege can also alter and drop other roles. If not specified,
66           NOCREATEROLE is the default.
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68       INHERIT
69       NOINHERIT
70           These clauses determine whether a role “inherits” the privileges of
71           roles it is a member of. A role with the INHERIT attribute can
72           automatically use whatever database privileges have been granted to
73           all roles it is directly or indirectly a member of. Without
74           INHERIT, membership in another role only grants the ability to SET
75           ROLE to that other role; the privileges of the other role are only
76           available after having done so. If not specified, INHERIT is the
77           default.
78
79       LOGIN
80       NOLOGIN
81           These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log in; that
82           is, whether the role can be given as the initial session
83           authorization name during client connection. A role having the
84           LOGIN attribute can be thought of as a user. Roles without this
85           attribute are useful for managing database privileges, but are not
86           users in the usual sense of the word. If not specified, NOLOGIN is
87           the default, except when CREATE ROLE is invoked through its
88           alternative spelling CREATE USER.
89
90       REPLICATION
91       NOREPLICATION
92           These clauses determine whether a role is a replication role. A
93           role must have this attribute (or be a superuser) in order to be
94           able to connect to the server in replication mode (physical or
95           logical replication) and in order to be able to create or drop
96           replication slots. A role having the REPLICATION attribute is a
97           very highly privileged role, and should only be used on roles
98           actually used for replication. If not specified, NOREPLICATION is
99           the default. You must be a superuser to create a new role having
100           the REPLICATION attribute.
101
102       BYPASSRLS
103       NOBYPASSRLS
104           These clauses determine whether a role bypasses every row-level
105           security (RLS) policy.  NOBYPASSRLS is the default. You must be a
106           superuser to create a new role having the BYPASSRLS attribute.
107
108           Note that pg_dump will set row_security to OFF by default, to
109           ensure all contents of a table are dumped out. If the user running
110           pg_dump does not have appropriate permissions, an error will be
111           returned. However, superusers and the owner of the table being
112           dumped always bypass RLS.
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114       CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
115           If role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent connections
116           the role can make. -1 (the default) means no limit. Note that only
117           normal connections are counted towards this limit. Neither prepared
118           transactions nor background worker connections are counted towards
119           this limit.
120
121       [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
122       PASSWORD NULL
123           Sets the role's password. (A password is only of use for roles
124           having the LOGIN attribute, but you can nonetheless define one for
125           roles without it.) If you do not plan to use password
126           authentication you can omit this option. If no password is
127           specified, the password will be set to null and password
128           authentication will always fail for that user. A null password can
129           optionally be written explicitly as PASSWORD NULL.
130
131               Note
132               Specifying an empty string will also set the password to null,
133               but that was not the case before PostgreSQL version 10. In
134               earlier versions, an empty string could be used, or not,
135               depending on the authentication method and the exact version,
136               and libpq would refuse to use it in any case. To avoid the
137               ambiguity, specifying an empty string should be avoided.
138           The password is always stored encrypted in the system catalogs. The
139           ENCRYPTED keyword has no effect, but is accepted for backwards
140           compatibility. The method of encryption is determined by the
141           configuration parameter password_encryption. If the presented
142           password string is already in MD5-encrypted or SCRAM-encrypted
143           format, then it is stored as-is regardless of password_encryption
144           (since the system cannot decrypt the specified encrypted password
145           string, to encrypt it in a different format). This allows reloading
146           of encrypted passwords during dump/restore.
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148       VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
149           The VALID UNTIL clause sets a date and time after which the role's
150           password is no longer valid. If this clause is omitted the password
151           will be valid for all time.
152
153       IN ROLE role_name
154           The IN ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles to which the
155           new role will be immediately added as a new member. (Note that
156           there is no option to add the new role as an administrator; use a
157           separate GRANT command to do that.)
158
159       IN GROUP role_name
160           IN GROUP is an obsolete spelling of IN ROLE.
161
162       ROLE role_name
163           The ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles which are
164           automatically added as members of the new role. (This in effect
165           makes the new role a “group”.)
166
167       ADMIN role_name
168           The ADMIN clause is like ROLE, but the named roles are added to the
169           new role WITH ADMIN OPTION, giving them the right to grant
170           membership in this role to others.
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172       USER role_name
173           The USER clause is an obsolete spelling of the ROLE clause.
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175       SYSID uid
176           The SYSID clause is ignored, but is accepted for backwards
177           compatibility.
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NOTES

180       Use ALTER ROLE to change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE to
181       remove a role. All the attributes specified by CREATE ROLE can be
182       modified by later ALTER ROLE commands.
183
184       The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are being
185       used as groups is to use GRANT and REVOKE.
186
187       The VALID UNTIL clause defines an expiration time for a password only,
188       not for the role per se. In particular, the expiration time is not
189       enforced when logging in using a non-password-based authentication
190       method.
191
192       The INHERIT attribute governs inheritance of grantable privileges (that
193       is, access privileges for database objects and role memberships). It
194       does not apply to the special role attributes set by CREATE ROLE and
195       ALTER ROLE. For example, being a member of a role with CREATEDB
196       privilege does not immediately grant the ability to create databases,
197       even if INHERIT is set; it would be necessary to become that role via
198       SET ROLE before creating a database.
199
200       The INHERIT attribute is the default for reasons of backwards
201       compatibility: in prior releases of PostgreSQL, users always had access
202       to all privileges of groups they were members of. However, NOINHERIT
203       provides a closer match to the semantics specified in the SQL standard.
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205       Be careful with the CREATEROLE privilege. There is no concept of
206       inheritance for the privileges of a CREATEROLE-role. That means that
207       even if a role does not have a certain privilege but is allowed to
208       create other roles, it can easily create another role with different
209       privileges than its own (except for creating roles with superuser
210       privileges). For example, if the role “user” has the CREATEROLE
211       privilege but not the CREATEDB privilege, nonetheless it can create a
212       new role with the CREATEDB privilege. Therefore, regard roles that have
213       the CREATEROLE privilege as almost-superuser-roles.
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215       PostgreSQL includes a program createuser(1) that has the same
216       functionality as CREATE ROLE (in fact, it calls this command) but can
217       be run from the command shell.
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219       The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately; if two new
220       sessions start at about the same time when just one connection “slot”
221       remains for the role, it is possible that both will fail. Also, the
222       limit is never enforced for superusers.
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224       Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with
225       this command. The password will be transmitted to the server in
226       cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command history
227       or the server log. The command createuser(1), however, transmits the
228       password encrypted. Also, psql(1) contains a command \password that can
229       be used to safely change the password later.
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EXAMPLES

232       Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a password:
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234           CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;
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236       Create a role with a password:
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238           CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';
239
240       (CREATE USER is the same as CREATE ROLE except that it implies LOGIN.)
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242       Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of 2004.
243       After one second has ticked in 2005, the password is no longer valid.
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245           CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';
246
247       Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:
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249           CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;
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COMPATIBILITY

252       The CREATE ROLE statement is in the SQL standard, but the standard only
253       requires the syntax
254
255           CREATE ROLE name [ WITH ADMIN role_name ]
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257       Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of CREATE
258       ROLE, are PostgreSQL extensions.
259
260       The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but it
261       regards them as distinct concepts and leaves all commands defining
262       users to be specified by each database implementation. In PostgreSQL we
263       have chosen to unify users and roles into a single kind of entity.
264       Roles therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the
265       standard.
266
267       The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely approximated
268       by giving users the NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are given the
269       INHERIT attribute.
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SEE ALSO

272       SET ROLE (SET_ROLE(7)), ALTER ROLE (ALTER_ROLE(7)), DROP ROLE
273       (DROP_ROLE(7)), GRANT(7), REVOKE(7), createuser(1)
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277PostgreSQL 14.3                      2022                       CREATE ROLE(7)
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