dbowner

dbowner is a term used in database administration to describe a principal with ownership or broad control over a database or its objects. In SQL Server, db_owner refers to a fixed database role whose members have comprehensive permissions within the database. The concept of ownership and the db_owner role are related but distinct: ownership is a property of a database, while db_owner is a role that grants extensive rights inside that database.

In SQL Server, every database has an owner, typically the login that created the database. The owner is mapped to the special dbo user inside the database and can perform virtually any action without explicit grants. The db_owner role, by contrast, is a membership-based mechanism that allows members to create, modify, or delete objects and to grant rights within the database. A database owner has full control over the database; db_owner members have broad capabilities, but server-level permissions remain outside the scope of db_owner.

Management tasks for dbowner privileges include adding or removing members of the db_owner role and changing the database owner. In SQL Server, you can add a user to the role with a command like ALTER ROLE db_owner ADD MEMBER [login], and remove a member with ALTER ROLE db_owner DROP MEMBER [login]. To change the database owner, use ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::dbname TO [login].

Outside SQL Server, ownership concepts vary. In PostgreSQL, the database owner is the role that owns the database, with privileges granted via GRANT; there is no fixed db_owner role. In MySQL, privileges are assigned per database and do not include a universal db_owner role. Regardless of the system, dbowner-related privileges should be tightly controlled due to their potential to bypass typical security boundaries.