SQL Server 2012 - What is the purpose of assigning ownership of a schema to a user?

Question

Microsoft's docs on schema ownership don't go beyond saying "Schemas can be owned by any database principal, and a single principal can own multiple schemas." ( MSDN doc )

I get that schemas are a way of containing different security permissions, but what is the purpose of assigning an owner to a schema and what special privileges does that user who owns the schema receive as opposed to simply being a member of the schema?

Answer 1

An owner of a schema is like the sysadmin within that schema, can create , drop, select , update, delete , alter objects, give permissions to other users , revoker permissions of other users and pretty much everything .

On the other hand a user with in a schema can only do the operations according to what database role was given to them , for example will be assigned these permission as Permission to create objects, db_datareader can only issue select statements against tables, db_datawriter can do inserts/updates and the list goes on.

You dont want every user who has access to database to do all sorts of operations, some people will have less access some will requires more access, hence the different roles to suit user specific needs.

Ownership of schema has it roots with the problem we had in past before sql server 2005 when there were no schemas and objects were owned by users. To separate users from objects schemas were introduced and the concept of "Schema Ownership" was introduced, it is just another way of saying that this user has all the permissions in a schema.