Oracle 'sysman' account

Question

In Oracle, is sysman is the most powerful user or are there other equally privileged users?

Answer 1

Any user with SYSDBA privilege is your "most powerful" user. They are on equal footing. The owner of the data dictionary, SYS, is the "classic" superuser in Oracle.

BTW, SYSMAN is not a SYSDBA user by default:

C:\>sqlplus sysman@db as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Tue Apr 27 10:27:15 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Enter password:
ERROR:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges


Enter user-name:

If you are able to use OS authentication, it overrides password authentication:

C:\>sqlplus /nolog

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Tue Apr 27 10:30:04 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved.

SQL> conn sysman as sysdba
Enter password:
Connected.
SQL> select user from dual;

USER
------------------------------
SYS

SQL>