PostgreSQL: Modify OWNER on all tables simultaneously in PostgreSQL

Question

How do I modify the owner of all tables in a PostgreSQL database?

I tried ALTER TABLE * OWNER TO new_owner but it doesn't support the asterisk syntax.

Answer 1

You can use the REASSIGN OWNED command.

Synopsis:

REASSIGN OWNED BY old_role [, ...] TO new_role 

This changes all objects owned by old_role to the new role. You don't have to think about what kind of objects that the user has, they will all be changed. Note that it only applies to objects inside a single database. It does not alter the owner of the database itself either.

It is available back to at least 8.2. Their online documentation only goes that far back.

Answer 2

See REASSIGN OWNED command

Note: As @trygvis mentions in the answer below, the REASSIGN OWNED command is available since at least version 8.2, and is a much easier method.

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Since you're changing the ownership for all tables, you likely want views and sequences too. Here's what I did:

Tables:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select tablename from pg_tables where schemaname = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter table \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done 

Sequences:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select sequence_name from information_schema.sequences where sequence_schema = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter sequence \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done 

Views:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select table_name from information_schema.views where table_schema = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter view \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done 

You could probably DRY that up a bit since the alter statements are identical for all three.

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