In addition to assigning subject privileges to a user, Ingres lets you define a default set of subject privileges that will be available at session startup.

In addition, any privilege assigned to the user can be added or dropped during the life of the session; this capability effectively applies the principle of least privilege.

The principle of least privilege asserts that a subject must have the minimum privileges required to perform an operation, and that these privileges must be active for the minimum amount of time necessary to perform that operation.

Thus, a session has three sets of privileges associated with it:

The working privilege set is determined during the life of the session, when privileges can be made active as necessary to allow a privileged operation to be performed and made inactive on completion of the task.

The working privilege set is specified using the SET SESSION statement. Using SET SESSION, you can:

In VDBA, the maximum privilege set consists of all the privileges enabled in the Active by Request column of the Create User or Alter User dialog. The default privilege set, which is a subset of the maximum privilege set, consists of all the privileges enabled in the Active by Default column of the Create User or Alter User dialog.