REFRESH_GROUPED_POLICY Procedure

This procedure reparses the SQL statements associated with a refreshed policy.

Syntax

DBMS_RLS.REFRESH_GROUPED_POLICY (
   object_schema   VARCHAR2,
   object_name     VARCHAR2,
   group_name      VARCHAR2,
   policy_name     VARCHAR2 ); 

Parameters

Table 56-13 REFRESH_GROUPED_POLICY Procedure Parameters

Parameter	Description
object_schema	The schema containing the table or view.
object_name	The name of the table or view with which the policy is associated.
group_name	The name of the group of the policy.
policy_name	The name of the policy.

Usage Notes

• This procedure causes all the cached statements associated with the policy to be reparsed. This guarantees that the latest change to the policy will have immediate effect after the procedure is executed.

• The procedure causes the current transaction, if any, to commit before the operation is carried out.

• A commit is performed at the end of the operation.

• The procedure returns an error if it tries to refresh a disabled policy.

Example

This example illustrates the necessary steps to enforce a fine-grained access control policy.

In an Oracle HR application, PER_PEOPLE is a view for the PER_ALL_PEOPLE table, and both objects are under APPS schema.

CREATE TABLE per_all_people 
            (person_id NUMBER(15), 
             last_name VARCHAR2(30), 
             emp_no VARCHAR2(15), ...);
CREATE VIEW per_people AS 
       SELECT * FROM per_all_people;

There should be a security policy that limits access to the PER_PEOPLE view based on the user's role in the company. The predicates for the policy can be generated by the SECURE_PERSON function in the HR_SECURITY package. The package is under schema APPS and contains functions to support all security policies related to the HR application. Also, all the application contexts are under the APPS_SEC namespace.

CREATE PACKAGE BODY hr_security IS
  FUNCTION secure_person(obj_schema VARCHAR2, obj_name VARCHAR2)
                     RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
      d_predicate VARCHAR2(2000);
  BEGIN
      -- for users with HR_ROLE set to EMP, map logon user name
      -- to employee id. FND_USER table stores relationship
      -- among database users, application users, 
      -- and people held in the HR person table.
      IF SYS_CONTEXT('apps_sec', 'hr_role') = 'EMP' THEN
        d_predicate = 'person_id IN 
                     (SELECT employee_id FROM apps.fnd_user 
                      WHERE user_name = SYS_CONTEXT(''userenv'', ''session_
user''))';
      -- for users with HR_ROLE set to MGR (manager), map
      -- security profile id to a list of employee id that 
      -- the user can access
      ELSE IF SYS_CONTEXT('apps_sec', 'hr_role') = 'MGR' THEN
        d_predicate = 'person_id IN
                     (SELECT ppl.employee_id FROM per_person_list ppl WHERE
                      ppl.security_profile_id = SYS_CONTEXT(''apps_sec'', 
''security_profile_id''))
                      OR EXISTS (SELECT NULL FROM apps.per security_profiles psp 
WHERE
                      SYS_CONTEXT(''apps_sec'', ''security_profile_id'') =
                      psp.security_profile_id AND psp.view_all_flag = ''Y''))';
      ELSE 
           d_predicate = '1=2';  -- deny access to other users, may use 
something like 'keycol=null'
      END IF;
      RETURN d_predicate;
     END secure_person; 
    END hr_security; 

The next step is to associate a policy (here we call it PER_PEOPLE_SEC) for the PER_PEOPLE view to the HR_SECURITY.SECURE_PERSON function that generates the dynamic predicates:

DBMS_RLS.ADD_POLICY('apps', 'per_people', 'per_people_sec', 'apps'    
                    'hr_security.secure_person', 'select, update, delete');

Now, any SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE statement with the PER_PEOPLE view involved will pick up one of the three predicates based on the value of the application context HR_ROLE.

Note: The same security function that secured the PER_ALL_PEOPLE table can also be used to generate the dynamic predicates to secure the PER_ADDRESSES table, because they have the same policy to limit access to data.