Comments - SHOW GRANTS

Okay. Here is some more info:

1) Platform: - MariaDB 10.1.8 - Centos 6.7

2) Created Database: CREATE DATABASE dataservice; CREATE TABLE operations ( id INT(11) NOT NULL UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY, description VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL

3) Create role: CREATE ROLE research; GRANT SHOW DATABASES ON *.* TO research; GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON dataservice.operations TO research; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

4) Try to view the grants: SET ROLE research;

SHOW GRANTS FOR research

(Result is: ERROR 1141 (42000): There is no such grant defined for user 'research' on host '%')

SHOW GRANTS; (This works)

5) NB: Using default my.ini settings, nothing has been modified. Attached is a pasteboard http://pasteboard.co/2fV4Ibvk.png

Just to note, all this is being done with root user. If i issue the research role to root user then it can execute SHOW GRANTS FOR research. I assumed ROOT should be able to see the grants because it has rights for grants?

I can't recreate, as when I do the same workflow on 10.1.8 Ubuntu, I can see the grants. I ran the following statements, taken from your code above, with fixed syntax.

CREATE DATABASE dataservice;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> USE dataservice;
Database changed
MariaDB [dataservice]> CREATE TABLE operations ( 
  id INT(11) UNSIGNED NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, 
  description VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.73 sec)

MariaDB [dataservice]> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE 
  ON dataservice.operations TO research;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [dataservice]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [dataservice]> SHOW GRANTS FOR research;
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for research                                                      |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT SHOW DATABASES ON *.* TO 'research'                                |
| GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON `dataservice`.`operations` TO 'research' |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Doing the same with SET ROLE research before the SHOW makes no difference.

I suggest reporting this as a bug, as perhaps someone can find an environment where this fails, or find the problem in your situation.

Thanks for the feedback @greenman

Very well, I shall do as you advise.

Please note that

1) I am also unable to reproduce on Windows 7 as per the snaggy below it works as expected http://snag.gy/9d5PA.jpg

2) However, I have reproduced it in Ubuntu 14.04. Apologies there is some earlier confusion above, the initial try was on Centos 6.7 (see link below) http://snag.gy/872B4.jpg