ALTER USER

Enterprise command reference.

Command Snapshot

Field	Value
Category	Security and Access Control
Mutates Data	Yes/Depends
Scope	Cluster / Object
Privilege Model	Requires administrative privilege for role, user, and privilege management.

Purpose

Defines, changes, or removes schema and metadata objects.

Syntax

ALTER USER username
    { SET ( parameter = value [, ...] )
    | RESET [parameter | ALL] }

Operational Notes

Use schema-qualified identifiers in automation and automation pipelines.
Validate behavior in staging for cluster-impacting or governance-impacting changes.
Confirm runtime effects through system tables and metrics before and after execution.

When to Use

Use to implement least-privilege access and role governance.
Use when onboarding users/roles or changing permission boundaries.

When Not to Use

Avoid broad wildcard grants/denials without impact review and audit traceability.

Common Errors and Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely Cause	Action
Permission denied / unauthorized	Missing privilege on object or cluster scope	Re-run with required grants or elevated admin role.
Analysis/parse error	Syntax variant or object shape mismatch	Compare with canonical syntax and object definition.
Runtime failure under load	Resource limits, breaker pressure, or node state transitions	Check `sys.jobs`, `sys.operations`, `sys.checks`, and retry after mitigation.

Cross-References

Detailed Reference

The ALTER USER statement in MonkDB is used to modify attributes of an existing database user. This includes setting or resetting parameters such as passwords, JWT properties, and session settings. The ALTER USER statement functions identically to the ALTER ROLE statement.

SQL Statement

ALTER USER username
    { SET ( parameter = value [, ...] )
    | RESET [parameter | ALL] }

Parameters

username: The name of the user to be altered.
SET: Assigns new values to specified parameters for the user.
RESET: Restores specified parameters to their default values.