Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

The public Role

The public role is a special database role that is like a fixed database role except that its permissions are not fixed. The permissions for this role can be altered. Every user in a database is automatically made a member of the public role and in turn receives any permissions that have been granted to the public role. Database users cannot be removed from the public role.

The public role is similar in function to the guest user that is installed by default in each database. The difference is that the permissions granted to the guest user are used by any login that does not have a user account in the database. In this case, the login is allowed to enter the database via the guest account. In the case of the public role, the login ...