Originally posted by shandj
Granting select any table to a user doesn't mean one is giving all the DBA privileges to a user.
Obviously I wasn't sarcastic enough in my previous reply. Sorry about that.

It is more than evident that your proposed solution gives much, much, much wider privileges to the end user than original poster was asking for. The original question was very simple: given the user's existing privileges, what do I have to do to enable him access to V$ and DBA_* family of views. In this aspect, your proposal was way to generous. By using your suggestion, the user will have select permition in any peace of data written into the database. I doubt this is what original poster was looking for.