I think I have found a bug with Postgres' permissions. I have combed through the documentation, but I haven't been able to find an explanation for the following problem. First of all here is what I am running. Postgress version 7.0.2 , OS Linux Red Hat 6.2 Kernel version 2.2.17 I have the following SQL statements to create three tables in a database that I have previously created. INSERT INTO pg_group (groname, grosysid, grolist) values ('confUser',100,'{}'); ALTER GROUP "confUser" Add User "conf-user"; CREATE TABLE Object_Type ( # Create the Object_Type table. Primary_Key serial , PRIMARY KEY (Primary_Key), Name char (20) NOT NULL ) ; GRANT select ON Object_Type TO GROUP "confUser"; CREATE TABLE Objects ( Primary_Key serial, PRIMARY KEY (Primary_Key), Object_Type_Index int, FOREIGN KEY (Object_Type_Index) REFERENCES Object_Type ON DELETE CASCADE, Object_Instance int , Name char (50) NOT NULL, Tag char (50), UNIQUE (Name,Object_Type_Index) ) ; GRANT select ON Objects TO GROUP "confUser"; CREATE TABLE Contact ( Primary_Key serial , PRIMARY KEY (Primary_Key), User_Index int, Greeting_Index int REFERENCES Objects, First_Name char (12) , Last_Name char (12) , Company_Name char (30) , Title char (30) , Company_Type int REFERENCES Objects, Assistant_Name char (30) , On_Comments varchar (512) , Off_Comments varchar (512) , Not_Current CHAR DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL ) ; GRANT select, insert, update ON Contact TO GROUP "confUser"; Here is the problem. If I try to insert a contact record as, "confUser." "psql" and my DBI driver for perl fails with a permission error on objects. If I give confUser permissions to write to the objects table the statement will execute. Here is a copy of the statement while logged on as conf-user and without write privleges on objects," idg-wendel=> insert into contact (user_index, greeting_index, first_name, last_ name, company_name, title, company_type) values (1, 3, 'Wendel', 'Leibe', 'Team ', 'Software Engineer', 3); ERROR: objects: Permission denied. idg-wendel=> BTW the objects table has more than 250 entries inside of it. In other words, I am giving a valid primary_key for the references in the contact table in both cases so I don't know why it is failing. Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong? Thanks, Wendel Leibe Software Engineer Austin, Texas