ORA-01720: Grant Option Does Not Exist

 

Question: I am getting an ORA-01720 error while trying to grant SELECT privileges to a second user on a view owned by one user: 

ORA-01720: grant option does not exist for 'SYS.V_$INSTANCE'

I even granted select on sys.v_$instance to the second user. Still the problem persists. How do I correct this ORA-01720 error?

Answer:  To diagnose any error, you start by using the oerr utility to display the ORA-01720 error:

ORA-01720: grant option does not exist for 'string.string'

Cause: A grant was being performed on a view and the grant option was not present for an underlying object.

Action: Obtain the grant option on all underlying objects of the view.

First, you need to grant SELECT on sys.v_$instance to the first user that owns the view using the GRANT option.  This will allow the owner to grant SELECT on views based on v_$instance to other users, which should eliminate the ORA-01720. 

Here is another more academic example of this problem and the solution to the ORA-01720:

- USER "A" has created a TABLE "table_1"
- USER "B" has created a SYNONYM on "A"."table_1"
- USER "B" has created a VIEW "view_1" based on "table_1"
- USER "B" has created a PUBLIC SYNONYM on VIEW "view_1"
- USER "B" has the right to select "A"."table_1" (grant option NO)
- USER "C" has the right to select "A"."table_1" (grant option NO)
- USER "C" has the right to select "B"."view_1" (grant option NO)

Now we log in as USER "C" and try to execute the following command:

SELECT * FROM view_1

ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

Why does USER "C" have insufficient privileges?  Do a little experimenting and log in as USER "B" and executed the following command.

grant select on view_1 to C;

ORA-01720: grant option does not exist for A.table_1

So it seems that USER "B" is not able to grant something to another user if the object he wants to grant access to uses some other object from another USER (in this case USER "A")!  The USER to whom we want to grant access (USER "C") has the SELECT right on "table_1", so the underlying object ("table_1") of the VIEW "view_1" is very well accessible to USER "C".  Here's the solution:

- USER "A" grants USER "B" select rights WITH grant option on "table_1"
- USER "B" grants USER "C" select on "view_1"

USER "C" then is able to select from "view_1" without problems.

This should help you resolve your ORA-01720 error.

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