PostgreSQL 11 Administration Cookbook

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Consider a table, t, with columns, c1, c2, and c3; there are two different ways of authorizing user u to perform the following query:

SELECT * FROM t;

The first is by granting a table-level privilege, as follows:

GRANT SELECT ON TABLE t TO u;

The alternative way is by granting column-level privileges, as follows:

GRANT SELECT (c1,c2,c3) ON TABLE t TO u;

Despite these two methods having overlapping effects, table-level privileges are distinct from column-level privileges, which is correct since the meaning of each is different. Granting privileges on a table means giving them to all columns present and future, while column-level privileges require the explicit indication of columns and, therefore, don't extend automatically to ...