Authorization — Complete Guide
Authorization — Complete Guide: free step-by-step lesson with examples, common mistakes, and interview tips — part of MySQL Tutorial on Toolliyo Academy.
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MySQL Tutorial · Lesson 82 of 100
Authorization
Basics ✓ → Advanced
Advanced · 2 — Production · ~10 min · MySQL — Security & Cloud MySQL
What is this?
Authorization is what an authenticated user may do: GRANT SELECT, INSERT on specific tables. MySQL checks privileges on each statement.
Why should you care?
Reporting tool needs SELECT on orders only — not DELETE on customers. Principle of least privilege limits blast radius.
See it live — copy this example
Run in MySQL Workbench or the mysql CLI.
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON DataFlow.orders TO 'dataflow_app'@'10.0.%.%';
GRANT SELECT ON DataFlow.products TO 'dataflow_app'@'10.0.%.%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
SHOW GRANTS FOR 'dataflow_app'@'10.0.%.%';What happened?
- App user manipulates orders and reads products — cannot touch mysql system tables or DROP schema.
- SHOW GRANTS audits effective permissions.
Practice next
- CREATE test user dataflow_readonly.
- GRANT SELECT only on DataFlow.*.
- Try DELETE — access denied.
- Column-level GRANT SELECT (customer_id, full_name) only.
- GRANT EXECUTE on one procedure for batch job user.
Remember
GRANT/REVOKE control DML and DDL rights. Scope to database.table columns when possible. Audit grants quarterly.
DataFlow BI tool
Metabase connects as dataflow_bi with SELECT on views only — no base table write.
Outcome: Analyst SQL mistake cannot truncate orders.
Interview prep for this lesson
Practice these questions aloud after reading—each links to a full structured answer.
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