The CREATE ROLE statement creates a role to which privileges can be granted. Privileges can be granted to roles, which can then be assigned to users. A user that has been assigned a role will only be able to exercise the privileges of that role. Only users that have administrative privileges can create/drop roles. By default, the hive, impala and hue users have administrative privileges in Sentry.

Syntax:

CREATE ROLE role_name

Required privileges:

Only administrative users (those with ALL privileges on the server, defined in the Sentry policy file) can use this statement.

Compatibility:

Impala makes use of any roles and privileges specified by the GRANT and REVOKE statements in Hive, and Hive makes use of any roles and privileges specified by the GRANT and REVOKE statements in Impala. The Impala GRANT and REVOKE statements for privileges do not require the ROLE keyword to be repeated before each role name, unlike the equivalent Hive statements.

Cancellation: Cannot be cancelled.

HDFS permissions: This statement does not touch any HDFS files or directories, therefore no HDFS permissions are required.

Related information:

Enabling Sentry Authorization for Impala, GRANT Statement (CDH 5.2 or higher only), REVOKE Statement (CDH 5.2 or higher only), DROP ROLE Statement (CDH 5.2 or higher only), SHOW Statement