A system privilege is a set of rights assigned to a database user, group, or role. You use system privileges to create user profiles with different levels of influence over the database content.
System privileges are used in association with object permissions (see Granting object permissions) to evaluate the rights of a user, group, or role. For example, if a user has the modify privilege, he cannot modify an object on which he has no update permission.
In some DBMS, system privileges are called permissions. In this manual, the term privilege is used for any right granted to a user, a group, or a role. Permissions are defined for objects.
System privileges vary according to the DBMS you are using. The list of privileges also includes predefined roles (like connect, or resource) for an easier use.
System privileges are granted to a user. A user with administrative profile is also allowed to revoke a privilege in order to prevent a user from performing certain actions over the database content.
The list of predefined system privileges allowed in the current DBMS is available in the System entry under Script\Object\Privileges in the DBMS resource file. The Privileges category also contains entries used to provide the syntax for the different order corresponding to the DBMS privileges.