Question

How do I modify the owner of all tables in a PostgreSQL database?

I tried ALTER TABLE * OWNER TO new_owner but it doesn’t support the asterisk syntax.

Answer 1

See REASSIGN OWNED command

Note: As @trygvis mentions in the answer below, the REASSIGN OWNED command is available since at least version 8.2, and is a much easier method.

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Since you’re changing the ownership for all tables, you likely want views and sequences too. Here’s what I did:

Tables:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select tablename from pg_tables where schemaname = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter table \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done

Sequences:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select sequence_name from information_schema.sequences where sequence_schema = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter sequence \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done

Views:

for tbl in `psql -qAt -c "select table_name from information_schema.views where table_schema = 'public';" YOUR_DB` ; do  psql -c "alter view \"$tbl\" owner to NEW_OWNER" YOUR_DB ; done

You could probably DRY that up a bit since the alter statements are identical for all three.

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