CREATE ROLE — define a new database role
CREATE ROLEname[ [ WITH ]option[ ... ] ] whereoptioncan be: SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE | INHERIT | NOINHERIT | LOGIN | NOLOGIN | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION | BYPASSRLS | NOBYPASSRLS | CONNECTION LIMITconnlimit| [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password' | PASSWORD NULL | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp' | IN ROLErole_name[, ...] | IN GROUProle_name[, ...] | ROLErole_name[, ...] | ADMINrole_name[, ...] | USERrole_name[, ...] | SYSIDuid
   CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a
   PostgreSQL database cluster.  A role is
   an entity that can own database objects and have database privileges;
   a role can be considered a “user”, a “group”, or both
   depending on how it is used.  Refer to
   Chapter 22 and Chapter 21 for information about managing
   users and authentication.  You must have CREATEROLE
   privilege or be a database superuser to use this command.
  
Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and so are valid in all databases in the cluster.
nameThe name of the new role.
SUPERUSERNOSUPERUSER
        These clauses determine whether the new role is a “superuser”,
        who can override all access restrictions within the database.
        Superuser status is dangerous and should be used only when really
        needed.  You must yourself be a superuser to create a new superuser.
        If not specified,
        NOSUPERUSER is the default.
       
CREATEDBNOCREATEDB
        These clauses define a role's ability to create databases.  If
        CREATEDB is specified, the role being
        defined will be allowed to create new databases. Specifying
        NOCREATEDB will deny a role the ability to
        create databases. If not specified,
        NOCREATEDB is the default.
       
CREATEROLENOCREATEROLE
        These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to
        create, alter, drop, comment on, change the security label for,
        and grant or revoke membership in other roles.
        See role creation for more details about what
        capabilities are conferred by this privilege.
        If not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.
       
INHERITNOINHERIT
        These clauses determine whether a role “inherits” the
        privileges of roles it is a member of.
        A role with the INHERIT attribute can automatically
        use whatever database privileges have been granted to all roles
        it is directly or indirectly a member of.
        Without INHERIT, membership in another role
        only grants the ability to SET ROLE to that other role;
        the privileges of the other role are only available after having
        done so.
        If not specified,
        INHERIT is the default.
       
LOGINNOLOGIN
        These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log in;
        that is, whether the role can be given as the initial session
        authorization name during client connection.  A role having
        the LOGIN attribute can be thought of as a user.
        Roles without this attribute are useful for managing database
        privileges, but are not users in the usual sense of the word.
        If not specified,
        NOLOGIN is the default, except when
        CREATE ROLE is invoked through its alternative spelling
        CREATE USER.
       
REPLICATIONNOREPLICATION
        These clauses determine whether a role is a replication role.  A role
        must have this attribute (or be a superuser) in order to be able to
        connect to the server in replication mode (physical or logical
        replication) and in order to be able to create or drop replication
        slots.
        A role having the REPLICATION attribute is a very
        highly privileged role, and should only be used on roles actually
        used for replication. If not specified,
        NOREPLICATION is the default.
        You must be a superuser to create a new role having the
        REPLICATION attribute.
       
BYPASSRLSNOBYPASSRLS
        These clauses determine whether a role bypasses every row-level
        security (RLS) policy.  NOBYPASSRLS is the default.
        You must be a superuser to create a new role having
        the BYPASSRLS attribute.
       
        Note that pg_dump will set row_security to
        OFF by default, to ensure all contents of a table are
        dumped out.  If the user running pg_dump does not have appropriate
        permissions, an error will be returned.  However, superusers and the
        owner of the table being dumped always bypass RLS.
       
CONNECTION LIMIT connlimitIf role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent connections the role can make. -1 (the default) means no limit. Note that only normal connections are counted towards this limit. Neither prepared transactions nor background worker connections are counted towards this limit.
ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'PASSWORD NULL
        Sets the role's password.  (A password is only of use for
        roles having the LOGIN attribute, but you
        can nonetheless define one for roles without it.)  If you do
        not plan to use password authentication you can omit this
        option.  If no password is specified, the password will be set
        to null and password authentication will always fail for that
        user.  A null password can optionally be written explicitly as
        PASSWORD NULL.
       
Specifying an empty string will also set the password to null, but that was not the case before PostgreSQL version 10. In earlier versions, an empty string could be used, or not, depending on the authentication method and the exact version, and libpq would refuse to use it in any case. To avoid the ambiguity, specifying an empty string should be avoided.
        The password is always stored encrypted in the system catalogs. The
        ENCRYPTED keyword has no effect, but is accepted for
        backwards compatibility. The method of encryption is determined
        by the configuration parameter password_encryption.
        If the presented password string is already in MD5-encrypted or
        SCRAM-encrypted format, then it is stored as-is regardless of
        password_encryption (since the system cannot decrypt
        the specified encrypted password string, to encrypt it in a
        different format).  This allows reloading of encrypted passwords
        during dump/restore.
       
VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
        The VALID UNTIL clause sets a date and
        time after which the role's password is no longer valid.  If
        this clause is omitted the password will be valid for all time.
       
IN ROLE role_name
        The IN ROLE clause lists one or more existing
        roles to which the new role will be immediately added as a new
        member.  (Note that there is no option to add the new role as an
        administrator; use a separate GRANT command to do that.)
       
IN GROUP role_nameIN GROUP is an obsolete spelling of
        IN ROLE.
       
ROLE role_name
        The ROLE clause lists one or more existing
        roles which are automatically added as members of the new role.
        (This in effect makes the new role a “group”.)
       
ADMIN role_name
        The ADMIN clause is like ROLE,
        but the named roles are added to the new role WITH ADMIN
        OPTION, giving them the right to grant membership in this role
        to others.
       
USER role_name
        The USER clause is an obsolete spelling of
        the ROLE clause.
       
SYSID uid
        The SYSID clause is ignored, but is accepted
        for backwards compatibility.
       
   Use ALTER ROLE to
   change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE
   to remove a role.  All the attributes
   specified by CREATE ROLE can be modified by later
   ALTER ROLE commands.
  
   The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are being
   used as groups is to use
   GRANT and
   REVOKE.
  
   The VALID UNTIL clause defines an expiration time for a
   password only, not for the role per se.  In
   particular, the expiration time is not enforced when logging in using
   a non-password-based authentication method.
  
   The INHERIT attribute governs inheritance of grantable
   privileges (that is, access privileges for database objects and role
   memberships).  It does not apply to the special role attributes set by
   CREATE ROLE and ALTER ROLE.  For example, being
   a member of a role with CREATEDB privilege does not immediately
   grant the ability to create databases, even if INHERIT is set;
   it would be necessary to become that role via
   SET ROLE before
   creating a database.
  
   The INHERIT attribute is the default for reasons of backwards
   compatibility: in prior releases of PostgreSQL,
   users always had access to all privileges of groups they were members of.
   However, NOINHERIT provides a closer match to the semantics
   specified in the SQL standard.
  
   Be careful with the CREATEROLE privilege. There is no concept of
   inheritance for the privileges of a CREATEROLE-role. That
   means that even if a role does not have a certain privilege but is allowed
   to create other roles, it can easily create another role with different
   privileges than its own (except for creating roles with superuser
   privileges). For example, if the role “user” has the
   CREATEROLE privilege but not the CREATEDB privilege,
   nonetheless it can create a new role with the CREATEDB
   privilege. Therefore, regard roles that have the CREATEROLE
   privilege as almost-superuser-roles.
  
   PostgreSQL includes a program createuser that has
   the same functionality as CREATE ROLE (in fact,
   it calls this command) but can be run from the command shell.
  
   The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately;
   if two new sessions start at about the same time when just one
   connection “slot” remains for the role, it is possible that
   both will fail.  Also, the limit is never enforced for superusers.
  
   Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password
   with this command.  The password will be transmitted to the server
   in cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command
   history or the server log.  The command createuser, however, transmits
   the password encrypted.  Also, psql
   contains a command
   \password that can be used to safely change the
   password later.
  
Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a password:
CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;
Create a role with a password:
CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';
   (CREATE USER is the same as CREATE ROLE except
   that it implies LOGIN.)
  
Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of 2004. After one second has ticked in 2005, the password is no longer valid.
CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';
Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:
CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;
   The CREATE ROLE statement is in the SQL standard,
   but the standard only requires the syntax
CREATE ROLEname[ WITH ADMINrole_name]
   Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of
   CREATE ROLE, are
   PostgreSQL extensions.
  
The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but it regards them as distinct concepts and leaves all commands defining users to be specified by each database implementation. In PostgreSQL we have chosen to unify users and roles into a single kind of entity. Roles therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the standard.
   The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely approximated
   by giving users the NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are
   given the INHERIT attribute.