Creating a Read-Only Database User Account in an Oracle Database

To create a user with read-only privilege and the ability to read dictionary objects in Oracle, you can follow these steps:

Connect to the database as a user with the necessary privileges (such as SYSDBA).

Create a new user:

CREATE USER read_only_user IDENTIFIED BY password;

Grant the user the SELECT privilege:

GRANT SELECT TO read_only_user;

Grant the user the SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE role:

GRANT SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE TO read_only_user;

The SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE role allows the user to query the data dictionary views and other system-level objects.

COMMIT;

This will create a new user called read_only_user with read-only privilege and the ability to query the data dictionary views.

Keep in mind that the user will not be able to modify any data or objects in the database, and will only be able to query the data dictionary views and other objects that they have been granted access to.

It can be quite common to create a “Read Only” database user account in an Oracle database. To do so, it is pretty easy to use the principle of least privilege:

CREATE USER READ_ONLY IDENTIFIED BY "password";
GRANT CREATE SESSION TO READ_ONLY;

To read all tables in the databases:

GRANT READ ANY TABLE TO READ_ONLY;

To grant access to dictionary tables:

GRANT SELECT ANY DICTIONARY TO READ_ONLY;