Question

I have readonly access to the master database however the following query only returns a subset of users. What permissions are needed to return the rest of the users?

SELECT [name] FROM master.dbo.syslogins

Answer 1

What version of SQL Server are you on??

The syslogins catalog view has been deprecated with SQL Server 2005 – if you’re on 2005 or up, you should use sys.server_principals and sys.sql_logins instead.

When you check the MSDN Books Online topic for sys.server_principals, you’ll see a note at the bottom of the page:

In SQL Server 2005 and later versions,
the visibility of the metadata in
catalog views is limited to securables
that a user either owns or on which
the user has been granted some
permission. For more information, see
Metadata Visibility Configuration.

Go to the Metadata Visibility Configuration page to read up on the details of what objects you will be able to see, and how to get access to others.

This note is the most important part if you want to grant permissions:

To allow callers to view metadata, you
can grant the callers VIEW
DEFINITION permission at an
appropriate scope: object level,
database level or server level.
Therefore, in the previous example, if
the caller has VIEW DEFINITION
permission on myTable, the stored
procedure returns a row.