Policy utilities—refresh and drop

Policy utility activities such as refreshing or dropping can be done through DBMS_RLS package subprograms. Refreshing a policy pushes an enabled VPD protocol to inherit the latest changes done to the policy and its dependents. Policy refresh is required when the underlying referenced objects of the policy undergo changes. So as to invalidate its dependent objects operationally during the policy refresh process, all the cached statements associated with the policy are parsed again.

Notice that a disabled VPD policy cannot be refreshed.

The subprogram requires the policy owner, the table or view name, and the policy name as the input parameters:

SQL> EXEC DBMS_RLS.REFRESH_POLICY('ORADEV','EMPLOYEES','EMP_DEPT_20');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Dropping a policy lifts the data restriction and full data is visible to all the users. Like REFRESH_POLICY, the dropping subprogram also requires the policy owner, the table or view name, and the policy...