We are a team of tens of data analysts. Our main data back-end is an Oracle database. We use personal schemas to do work where we don't need to collaborate with others and we would like to create schemas dedicated to projects where people need to collaborate.
The problem is that in Oracle, one schema is equivalent to one DB user. If we create a schema dedicated to a project, for the purpose of creating DB objects in the context of that project, there will be a single set of credentials (username + password) that needs to be shared by all team members. This has two inconveniences:
- if people mistype the credentials, they can block the account for everyone;
- it is no longer possible to monitor who did what for security/audit reasons, since everyone uses the same schema;
An alternative would be that only one person uses the Schema user to create objects and assigns privileges to other people in those objects, but that can become quickly cumbersome.
Another alternative is to interact with the DB through R or Python but that means the credentials will be stored in some text file, which is bad for security.
As we see it, the ideal situation is if multiple personal DB users can create objects in the same schema, and if those objects are automatically available for that set of DB users. Is this totally impossible in Oracle? Is this impossible in any major DB? Is this requirement somehow flawed and as such, there is a good reason for why it is not available?
We could compare this collaboration in a DB schema to what commonly happens with people collaborating in a folder, using R, Python or other programming language for data analytics.
Thank you for your advise!