Authenticate and Authorize Users

ScalarDB Cluster has a mechanism to authenticate and authorize users.

This guide describes how to use authentication and authorization in ScalarDB Cluster.

Overview

By using authentication and authorization, you can create users and grant or revoke their privileges. You can create a user by using the CREATE USER command, and you can grant or revoke one's privileges on a table or a namespace by using the GRANT or REVOKE command, respectively. For details about such data control language (DCL) commands, see DCL.

Users can log in to ScalarDB Cluster with a username and a password and execute SQL statements if they have the required privileges.

Authentication and authorization support two types of users:

• Superusers: This type of user has all privileges. Only superusers can create or drop other users and namespaces.
• Normal users: This type of user initially doesn't have any privileges, so they need to be granted privileges by a superuser or another user who has the GRANT privilege.

The following privileges are available when using authentication and authorization:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• CREATE
• DROP
• TRUNCATE
• ALTER
• GRANT

For details about privileges, see Which privileges are required for each type of operation.

Configurations

This section describes the available configurations for authentication and authorization.

ScalarDB Cluster node configurations

To enable authentication and authorization, you need to set scalar.db.cluster.auth.enabled to true.

Name	Description	Default
scalar.db.cluster.auth.enabled	Whether authentication and authorization are enabled.	false

You can also set the following configurations:

Name	Description	Default
scalar.db.cluster.auth.cache_expiration_time_millis	Cache expiration time for authentication and authorization information in milliseconds.	60000 (1 minute)
scalar.db.cluster.auth.auth_token_expiration_time_minutes	Authentication and authorization token expiration time in minutes.	1440 (1 day)
scalar.db.cluster.auth.auth_token_gc_thread_interval_minutes	Authentication and authorization token garbage collection (GC) thread interval in minutes.	360 (6 hours)
scalar.db.cluster.auth.pepper	A secret value added to a password before hashing. If not specified, the password is hashed without pepper.

note

If you enable authentication and authorization, you will also need to set scalar.db.cross_partition_scan.enabled to true for the system namespace (scalardb by default) because authentication and authorization perform cross-partition scans internally.

ScalarDB Cluster Java client SDK configurations

To enable authentication and authorization on the client side, you need to set scalar.db.cluster.auth.enabled to true.

Name	Description	Default
scalar.db.cluster.auth.enabled	Whether authentication and authorization are enabled.	false

In addition to the configuration in the ScalarDB Cluster SQL client configurations section, you also need to set scalar.db.sql.cluster_mode.username and scalar.db.sql.cluster_mode.password to specify the username and password of the client.

Name	Description	Default
scalar.db.sql.cluster_mode.username	The username of the client.
scalar.db.sql.cluster_mode.password	The password of the client.

Initial user

When you enable authentication and authorization, the initial user admin is created and the initial password of that user is admin. This user is a superuser and has all privileges. You can log in with this user and create other users if necessary.

warning

For security purposes, be sure to change the password of the initial user, especially before deploying to a production environment.

Which privileges are required for each type of operation

The following tables show which privileges are required for each type of operation:

DDL

Command	Superuser required	Required privileges
CREATE NAMESPACE	true
DROP NAMESPACE	true
CREATE TABLE		CREATE
DROP TABLE		DROP
CREATE INDEX		CREATE
DROP INDEX		DROP
TRUNCATE TABLE		TRUNCATE
ALTER TABLE		ALTER
CREATE COORDINATOR TABLES	true
DROP COORDINATOR TABLES	true
TRUNCATE COORDINATOR TABLES	true

DML

Command	Superuser required	Required privileges
SELECT		SELECT
INSERT		INSERT
UPSERT		INSERT
UPDATE		SELECT and UPDATE
DELETE		SELECT and DELETE

DCL

Command	Superuser required	Required privileges
CREATE USER	true
ALTER USER	true (Users can change their own password.)
DROP USER	true
GRANT		GRANT (Users can grant only the privileges that they have.)
REVOKE		GRANT (Users can revoke only the privileges that they have.)