Patent ID: 8732200

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a query from a user, the query requesting access to a database object in a first database table; accessing a row in the first database table associated with the database object, the row of the first database table comprising a first column and a second column, the first column comprising an owner of the database object and the second column comprising a group identifier; determining whether the user is an owner of the database object based on the first column; in response to determining that the user is not an owner of the database object, determining whether the user is authorized to access the database object by: accessing a row in a second database table, the row in the second database table comprising a third column comprising a group identifier and a fourth column comprising a user identifier; determining that the group identifier in the second column of the first database table matches the group identifier in the third column of the second database table; and determining whether the user is authorized to access the database object based on the user identifier in the fourth column of the second database table; and allowing the user to access the database object in response to determining the user is authorized to access the database object.