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[, ...] | ROLErole_name[, ...] | ADMINrole_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 21 and Chapter 20 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.
   During role creation it is possible to immediately assign the newly created
   role to be a member of an existing role, and also assign existing roles
   to be members of the newly created role.  The rules for which initial
   role membership options are enabled are described below in the
   IN ROLE, ROLE, and
   ADMIN clauses.  The GRANT
   command has fine-grained option control during membership creation,
   and the ability to modify these options after the new role is created.
  
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.
        Only superuser roles or roles with CREATEDB
        can specify CREATEDB.
       
CREATEROLENOCREATEROLE
        These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to
        create, alter, drop, comment on, and change the security label for
        other roles.
        See role creation for more details about what
        capabilities are conferred by this privilege.
        If not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.
       
INHERITNOINHERIT
        This affects the membership inheritance status when this
        role is added as a member of another role, both in this and
        future commands.  Specifically, it controls the inheritance
        status of memberships added with this command using the
        IN ROLE clause, and in later commands using
        the ROLE clause.  It is also used as the
        default inheritance status when adding this role as a member
        using the GRANT command.  If not specified,
        INHERIT is the default.
       
In PostgreSQL versions before 16, inheritance was a role-level attribute that controlled all runtime membership checks for that role.
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.
        Only superuser roles or roles with REPLICATION
        can specify REPLICATION.
       
BYPASSRLSNOBYPASSRLS
        These clauses determine whether a role bypasses every row-level
        security (RLS) policy.  NOBYPASSRLS is the default.
        Only superuser roles or roles with BYPASSRLS
        can specify BYPASSRLS.
       
        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 causes the new role to
        be automatically added as a member of the specified existing
        roles. The new membership will have the SET
        option enabled and the ADMIN option disabled.
        The INHERIT option will be enabled unless the
        NOINHERIT option is specified.
       
ROLE role_name
        The ROLE clause causes one or more specified
        existing roles to be automatically added as members, with the
        SET option enabled. This in effect makes the
        new role a “group”.  Roles named in this clause
        with the role-level INHERIT attribute will have
        the INHERIT option enabled in the new membership.
        New memberships will have the ADMIN option disabled.
       
ADMIN role_name
        The ADMIN clause has the same effect as
        ROLE, but the named roles are added as members
        of the new role with ADMIN enabled, giving
        them the right to grant membership in the new role to others.
       
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 role attributes defined here are non-inheritable, i.e., being a
   member of a role with, e.g., CREATEDB will not
   allow the member to create new databases even if the membership grant
   has the INHERIT option.  Of course, if the membership
   grant has the SET option the member role would be able to
   SET ROLE to the
   createdb role and then create a new database.
  
   The membership grants created by the
   IN ROLE, ROLE, and ADMIN
   clauses have the role executing this command as the grantor.
  
   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.
  
   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
   creating SQL-standard users as PostgreSQL
   roles with the NOINHERIT option, and SQL-standard
   roles as PostgreSQL roles with the
   INHERIT option.
  
   The USER clause has the same behavior as
   ROLE but has been deprecated:
USER role_name [, ...]
   The IN GROUP clause has the same behavior as IN
   ROLE but has been deprecated:
IN GROUP role_name [, ...]