views in 12c

Observed an interesting idiosyncracy in the creation of views in 12c (this is in a pluggable database, but not confirmed whether this is related or not). This database was upgraded from 11.2 without incident…until we came to replace one of the existing views.

SQL> create or replace
  2  view EXISTING_VIEW_NAME
  3  as select * from other_schema.account;
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-01720: grant option does not exist for 'OTHER_SCHEMA.ACCOUNT'
*

Now that struck us as odd, because this was a script from our source code control repository, which had no previous entries about grants for the OTHER_SCHEMA.ACCOUNT table. So then I tried this:

SQL> create or replace
  2  view NEW_VIEW_NAME
  3  as select * from other_schema.account;

View created.

so there doesn’t appear to be the need for the grant option. Similarly, dropping the original view also solves the problem.

SQL> drop view EXISTING_VIEW_NAME;

View dropped.

SQL> create or replace
2 view EXISTING_VIEW_NAME
3 as select * from other_schema.account;

View created.

So when you get errors regarding grants in 12c, perhaps just double check to make sure you really need it.