This topic describes the Alibaba Cloud console account and the PolarDB database account.

Console account

You can use the following accounts to log on to the console:

  • Alibaba Cloud account: This account allows flexible control over all your Alibaba Cloud resources and is used for billing purposes. You must create an Alibaba Cloud account before you purchase Alibaba Cloud services.
  • RAM user account: Optional. You can create and manage RAM user accounts in the Resource Access Management (RAM) console to share resources to multiple users. A RAM user account does not own resources. Alibaba Cloud accounts are charged for all fees.

Database account

You can use the following accounts to log on to databases in the cluster. For more information, see Create a database account.
Account typeDescription
Account type Description
Privileged account
  • You can create and manage privileged accounts only in the console or by using APIs.
  • You can create multiple privileged accounts for each cluster. You can use privileged accounts to manage all standard accounts and databases of the cluster.
  • A privileged account has more permissions than before. This allows you to implement fine-grained control over user permissions based on your business requirements. For example, you can grant different users the permissions to query different tables.
  • A privileged account has full permissions on all databases in the cluster.
  • A privileged account has permissions to disconnect any account from the cluster.
Standard account
  • You can create and manage standard accounts in the console or by using SQL statements.
  • You can create multiple standard accounts for each cluster. The maximum number of standard accounts that you can create depends on the database engine.
  • You must manually grant permissions on specific databases to each standard account.
  • A standard account does not have permissions to create, manage, or disconnect other accounts of the cluster.

Related API operations

APIDescription
API Description
CreateAccount Creates an account.
DescribeAccounts Queries the accounts of a specified cluster.
ModifyAccountDescription Modifies the description of a database account for a PolarDB cluster.
ModifyAccountPassword Changes the password of a database account.
DeleteAccount Deletes an account.