CREATE ROLE

Create roles to manage access control to database resources, such as keyspaces, tables, functions. Use roles to:

• Define a set of permissions that can be assigned to other roles and mapped to external users.
• Create login accounts for internal authentication. (Not recommended for production environments.)

Synopsis

CREATE ROLE [IF NOT EXISTS] role_name 
[WITH SUPERUSER = true | false
 | LOGIN = true | false  
 | PASSWORD =  'password' 
 | OPTIONS = option_map]

role_name

Use a unique name for the role. Cassandra forces all names to lowercase; enclose in quotes to preserve case or use special characters in the name.

SUPERUSER

True automatically grants AUTHORIZE, CREATE and DROP permission on ALL ROLES.

Superusers can only manage roles by default. To manage other resources, you must grant the permission set to that resource. For example, to allow access management for all keyspaces: GRANT ALL PERMISSIONS ON ALL KEYSPACES TO role_name.

Default: false.

LOGIN

True allows the role to log in. Use true to create login accounts for internal authentication PasswordAuthenticator.

Default: false.

PASSWORD

Enclose the password in single quotes. Cassandra internal authentication requires a password.

Note: Roles for users authenticated by an external directory must have login enabled with no password.

OPTIONS = { option_map }

Reserved for use with authentication plug-ins. Refer to the authenticator documentation for details.

Examples

Creating a login account

1. Create a login role for coach.

   CREATE ROLE coach 
   WITH PASSWORD = 'All4One2day!' 
   AND LOGIN = true;

   Internal authentication requires the role to have a password.
2. Verify that the account works by logging in:

   LOGIN coach

3. Enter the password at the prompt.

   Password: 

4. The cqlsh prompt includes the role name:

   coach@cqlsh>

Creating a role

A best practice when using internal authentication is to create separate roles for permissions and login accounts. Once a role has been created it can be assigned as permission to another role, see GRANT for more details. Roles for externally authenticators users are mapped to the user's group name; LDAP mapping is case sensitive.

Create a role for the cycling keyspace administrator, that is a role that has full permission to only the cycling keyspace.

1. Create the role:

   CREATE ROLE cycling_admin;

   At this point the role has no permissions. Manage permissions using GRANT and REVOKE.
   Note: A role can only modify permissions of another role and can only modify (GRANT or REVOKE) role permissions that it also has.
2. Assign the role full access to the cycling keyspace:

   GRANT ALL PERMISSIONS on KEYSPACE cycling to cycling_admin;

3. Now assign the role to the coach.

   GRANT cycling_admin TO coach;

   This allows you to manage the permissions of all cycling administrators by modifying the cycling_admin role.
4. View the coach's permissions.

   list all permissions of coach;

   
    role           | username       | resource           | permission
   ----------------+----------------+--------------------+------------
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |     CREATE
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |      ALTER
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |       DROP
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |     SELECT
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |     MODIFY
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin | <keyspace cycling> |  AUTHORIZE
     cycling_admin |  cycling_admin |        <all roles> |  AUTHORIZE

Changing a password

ALTER ROLE coach WITH PASSWORD = 'NewPassword'