Patent ID: 8682912

Claim:
A computer-implemented method to secure access to data at a finer level of granularity than table-level security, based on public and private user-defined table functions (UDTFs), the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, from a calling application, a first query that is created by a user, and which references a public UDTF accessible by the calling application; responsive to the received first query, calling the referenced public UDTF; calling a private UDTF referenced by the called public UDTF and by operation of one or more computer processors, wherein the private UDTF is accessible by the public UDTF and inaccessible by at least one of the calling application and the user; submitting a second query to gather attributes comprising security attributes of the user and attributes of the called private UDTF; receiving query results which correspond to the second query, wherein the query results include the gathered attributes comprising the security attributes of the user and the attributes of the called private UDTF; forming a third query using the query results which correspond to the second query, whereby the third query is based on the gathered attributes; and submitting the third query to query a table, wherein access to data in the table is secured at a finer level of granularity than table-level security, based on the public and private UDTFs.