Diagnosing and Fixing the ORA-00086 Error in Oracle: Only SELECT and ALTER Privileges are Valid for Sequences

If you are encountering the ORA-00086 error in Oracle, it means that you are trying to perform an operation on a sequence for which you do not have the appropriate privileges. This error typically occurs when attempting to perform operations such as CREATE, DROP, or DDL statements on a sequence without the necessary privileges.

To diagnose and fix this issue, you will need to review the privileges granted to the user and ensure that they have the appropriate permissions to perform the desired sequence operations. Below, we will cover multiple examples and sample code to help you understand and address this error.

Diagnosing the ORA-00086 Error

When faced with the ORA-00086 error, the first step is to determine the specific sequence and operation that is causing the issue. You can do this by reviewing the SQL statement that triggered the error and identifying the sequence name and the operation being performed.

For example, if the error occurs when attempting to create a sequence, you might see a statement like:

CREATE SEQUENCE my_sequence;

Once you have identified the sequence and operation causing the error, you can proceed to diagnose the root cause of the issue.

Checking User Privileges

The next step is to review the privileges granted to the user attempting to perform the sequence operation. You can do this by querying the USER_TAB_PRIVS table to see the specific privileges granted to the user for the sequence.

For example, you can run the following query to check the privileges for the user:

SELECT *
FROM USER_TAB_PRIVS
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'MY_SEQUENCE';

This query will show you the privileges granted to the user for the specified sequence. If the user does not have the necessary privileges, you will need to grant them in order to resolve the error.

Granting Privileges

If the user does not have the required privileges to perform the sequence operation, you can grant them using the GRANT statement. For example, to grant the SELECT and ALTER privileges for the sequence to the user, you can run the following command:

GRANT SELECT, ALTER ON my_sequence TO user_name;

Replace “user_name” with the actual username for which you want to grant the privileges.

Additional Considerations

In some cases, the ORA-00086 error may also occur due to insufficient privileges at the database level. If the user does not have the necessary system privileges to perform sequence operations, you will need to grant them using the appropriate system privilege.

For example, you can grant the necessary system privileges to the user using the GRANT statement:

GRANT CREATE SEQUENCE TO user_name;

By granting the appropriate privileges at both the sequence and system levels, you can ensure that the user has the necessary permissions to perform the desired sequence operations and resolve the ORA-00086 error.

In conclusion, the ORA-00086 error in Oracle indicates that the user does not have the required privileges to perform a sequence operation. By diagnosing the specific sequence and operation causing the error, checking the user’s privileges, and granting the necessary permissions, you can effectively address this issue and ensure that the user is able to perform the desired sequence operations without encountering the ORA-00086 error.

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