Totally Hidden Column - Analogous to OLS

Does anyone know of a way to totally hide a column? I mean totally hidden - ie. it does not show up in 'describe' 'or select * from...'

Now, the best Oracle analogy of this hidden column concept is in Oracle Label Security. The hidden label column does not show up anywhere unless you explicitely select it.

The reason for this is we have much legacy code in older types of programming languages that we do not want to modify and recompile. One idea i have is to create an OLS policy for the table (freakin' ugly idea because my intention has nothing to do with OLS - but it would work).

Your advise is very appreciated.

Create a view and grant access to the table through this view only.

;)

Thinking through your idea i dont think it will work because:

A scott.table123 table and a scott.table123 view cannot exist in the same schema. Remember, I don't want to edit and recompile all the code.

Thanks.

Couldn't you create a schema with the name that all the code is expecting, and make that schema contain only views with the same name as the tables? Then put all the real tables in another schema?

FYI, Apparently OLS in 10g will have column level security, but obviously that doesn't help you now.

Or you could rename the tables:

conn scott/tiger
RENAME table123 to table123_base
Create view table123 as
select ... from table123_base;
:D

would the virtual private database functionality be of some help?

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs...te.htm#1012507

steve

Quote:

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Originally posted by stmontgo
would the virtual private database functionality be of some help?

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I don't think so. He want's to "hide" particular columns (vertical partitioning), while VPD enables you to "hide" particular rows (horizontal partitioning).

Using views is the way to go for his requirements.