Oracle - How do you make a table READ-ONLY?

<< Recovery Manager (RMAN) Notes | Journals | The Original Seawind Pages of 1998 >>

You can't. Unlike a tablespace where it can be made as READ-ONLY with:

alter tablespace THE_TABLESPACE_NAME READ ONLY;

Tables don't have such mechanism - but here's a nifty trick I got on the web on how to do this:

   create or replace trigger THE_TABLE_NAME_READ_ONLY
   before insert or update or delete
   on THE_TABLE_NAME
   begin
      raise_application_error (-20001, 'Table THE_TABLE_NAME is READ-ONLY, 
         Contact the Database Administrator to make changes to the data.');
   end;
   /