Answer - The MySQL privilege system ensures that all users may do exactly the things that they are supposed to be allowed to do. When you connect to a MySQL server, your identity is determined by the host from which you connect and the user name you specify. The system grants privileges according to your identity and what you want to do. MySQL considers both your hostname and user name in identifying you because there is little reason to assume that a given user name belongs to the same person everywhere on the Internet. For example, the user bill who connects from whitehouse.gov need not be the same person as the user bill who connects from microsoft.com. MySQL handles this by allowing you to distinguish users on different hosts that happen to have the same name: you can grant bill one set of privileges for connections from whitehouse.gov, and a different set of privileges for connections from microsoft.com. MySQL access control involves two stages: Stage 1: The server checks whether or not you are even allowed to connect. Stage 2: Assuming you can connect, the server checks each request you issue to see whether or not you have sufficient privileges to perform it. For example, if you try to select rows from a table in a database or drop a table from the database, the server makes sure you have the select privilege for the table or the drop privilege for the database. The server uses the user, db, and host tables in the mysql database at both stages of access control. The fields in these grant tables are shown below: Table name user db host Scope fields Host Host Host User Db Db Password User Privilege fields Select_priv Select_priv Select_priv Insert_priv Insert_priv Insert_priv Update_priv Update_priv Update_priv Delete_priv Delete_priv Delete_priv Index_priv Index_priv Index_priv Alter_priv Alter_priv Alter_priv Create_priv Create_priv Create_priv Drop_priv Drop_priv Drop_priv Grant_priv Grant_priv Grant_priv References_priv Reload_priv Shutdown_priv Process_priv File_priv For the second stage of access control (request verification), the server may, if the request involves tables, additionally consult the tables_priv and columns_priv tables.