Question

The scenario

CREATE SCHEMA testschema;
CREATE ROLE testrole LOGIN;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA testschema TO testrole;
ALTER ROLE testrole SET search_path = testschema;

Now if I initiate the connection (log in) as testrole then:

SHOW search_path; 

Gives the desired result:

search_path 
-------------
testschema
(1 row)

However, if I initiate connection (log in) as a superuser and do:

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION testrole;
SHOW search_path;

Results in:

search_path   
----------------
"$user",public
(1 row)

(or whatever the search path of the superuser is)

---

My question is, why does SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION not affect the current search_path?
Is it a bug, by design or am I simply doinitwrong?

From the little I’ve found, the workaround of SET SEARCH path = schemaname after SET SESSION... seems to be the only solution, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having persistent search paths assigned to roles.

Answer 1

This is by design. I quote the manual on ALTER ROLE

This only happens at login time; executing SET ROLE or SET SESSION
AUTHORIZATION does not cause new configuration values to be set.