ORA-00942: table or view does not exist (works when a separate sql, but does not work inside a oracle function)

Question

When I have a sql statement like select * from table1, it works great, but as soon as I put it into a function, I get:

ORA-00942: table or view          


        

Answer 1

There's a strong chance that the privileges to select from table1 have been granted to a role, and the role has been granted to you. Privileges granted to a role are not available to PL/SQL written by a user, even if the user has been granted the role.

You see this a lot for users that have been granted the dba role on objects owned by sys. A user with dba role will be able to, say, SELECT * from V$SESSION, but will not be able to write a function that includes SELECT * FROM V$SESSION.

The fix is to grant explicit permissions on the object in question to the user directly, for example, in the case above, the SYS user has to GRANT SELECT ON V_$SESSION TO MyUser;