I think I was confusing owner of database and owner of each object. I assumed if you owned the database you could do what you wanted with the tables in the database.
"Kevin Galligan" <mailinglists@kgalligan.com> writes: > set up and I can log in as that user. I've set the owner of the simple > database to that user with 'ALTER DATABASE [db] OWNER TO [user]', and this > user shows up as the owner with '\l+'. Yet, I can't do anything with the > database as that user.
Ownership of a database doesn't imply much except the right to drop the DB as a whole. In particular, it has essentially nothing to do with privileges on pre-existing objects within the database.