True privilege power

In all previous releases of Oracle, it didn't matter who you connected as, even as SYS - you could not grant privileges on someone else's objects.

SQL> conn / as sysdba
Connected.
SQL> grant select on SCOTT.EMP to PUBLIC;

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

Normally we had to do some ugly workarounds (such as creating a procedure in the owner's schema, or hacking the passwords). But this has been resolved in 9i

SQL> conn / as sysdba
Connected.
SQL> grant select on SCOTT.EMP to PUBLIC;

Grant succeeded.

This come courtesy of the new 'GRANT ANY OBJECT PRIVILEGE' privilege