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Wiki / SQL Commands

ALTER GROUP

change role name or membership

English manual coverage begins with PostgreSQL 6.4. Source history and runtime observations have their own recorded version boundaries.

Reading PG 18·Select a recorded version

anchor
SQL-ALTERGROUP
file
sql-altergroup.html
lang
en
name
ALTER GROUP
purpose
change role name or membership
purpose zh
更改角色名称或成员资格
sections same as
Unknown
slug
18

Syntax

ALTER GROUP role_specification ADD USER user_name [, ... ]
ALTER GROUP role_specification DROP USER user_name [, ... ]

where role_specification can be:
role_name
| CURRENT_ROLE
| CURRENT_USER
| SESSION_USER

ALTER GROUP group_name RENAME TO new_name
Syntax diagrams

Read left to right. Branches are choices, bypasses are optional, loops repeat. Select an underlined parameter to open its rule.

ALTER GROUP role_specification ADD USER user_name ,
ALTER GROUP · Syntax 2
ALTER GROUP role_specification DROP USER user_name ,
role_specification
role_name CURRENT_ROLE CURRENT_USER SESSION_USER
ALTER GROUP · Syntax 3
ALTER GROUP group_name RENAME TO new_name

Definition PG 18

ALTER GROUP role_specification ADD USER user_name [, ... ]
ALTER GROUP role_specification DROP USER user_name [, ... ]

where role_specification can be:
role_name
| CURRENT_ROLE
| CURRENT_USER
| SESSION_USER

ALTER GROUP group_name RENAME TO new_name

Description

ALTER GROUP changes the attributes of a user group. This is an obsolete command, though still accepted for backwards compatibility, because groups (and users too) have been superseded by the more general concept of roles.

The first two variants add users to a group or remove them from a group. (Any role can play the part of either a “user” or a “group” for this purpose.) These variants are effectively equivalent to granting or revoking membership in the role named as the “group”; so the preferred way to do this is to use GRANT or REVOKE. Note that GRANT and REVOKE have additional options which are not available with this command, such as the ability to grant and revoke ADMIN OPTION, and the ability to specify the grantor.

The third variant changes the name of the group. This is exactly equivalent to renaming the role with ALTER ROLE.

Parameters

group_name

The name of the group (role) to modify.

user_name

Users (roles) that are to be added to or removed from the group. The users must already exist; ALTER GROUP does not create or drop users.

new_name

The new name of the group.

Examples

Add users to a group:

ALTER GROUP staff ADD USER karl, john;

Remove a user from a group:

ALTER GROUP workers DROP USER beth;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER GROUP statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

GRANT, REVOKE, ALTER ROLE

Compare versions

Complete source facts

synopsis html

ALTER GROUP <em class="replaceable"><code>role_specification</code></em> ADD USER <em class="replaceable"><code>user_name</code></em> [, ... ]
ALTER GROUP <em class="replaceable"><code>role_specification</code></em> DROP USER <em class="replaceable"><code>user_name</code></em> [, ... ]

<span class="phrase">where <em class="replaceable"><code>role_specification</code></em> can be:</span>

    <em class="replaceable"><code>role_name</code></em>
  | CURRENT_ROLE
  | CURRENT_USER
  | SESSION_USER

ALTER GROUP <em class="replaceable"><code>group_name</code></em> RENAME TO <em class="replaceable"><code>new_name</code></em>

synopsis text

ALTER GROUP role_specification ADD USER user_name [, ... ]
ALTER GROUP role_specification DROP USER user_name [, ... ]

where role_specification can be:
role_name
| CURRENT_ROLE
| CURRENT_USER
| SESSION_USER

ALTER GROUP group_name RENAME TO new_name

Source references

Full definition and evidence JSON

Definition sources

center · PostgreSQL 18 · wiki-repair-20261023:f185fd730ab38be64b78eb86a6a50b5557e8cc791e0665dbd177f4e0a75cb553

Text language: en · wiki-repair-20261023:f185fd730ab38be64b78eb86a6a50b5557e8cc791e0665dbd177f4e0a75cb553