Select permission inside stored procedure?

Ok, on the basis of the above comment and as per my suspicion - it seems as though you are trying to execute dynamic SQL within your stored procedure.

What you need to remember is that when you do this it does not get executed within the context of the stored procedure - it gets executed within a new session. Because of this, the fact that the statement is being called within a stored procedure is a moot point, and you will need to grant explicit permission on the objects that your dynamic SQL is using.

If you don't want to do this I would refactor your stored procedure to not use dynamic SQL.

The below link from Microsoft should help you with your problem:

PRB: Security Context of Dynamic SQL Statements Inside a Stored Procedure (Wayback Machine archive)

This behavior occurs because a dynamic execution query (sp_executesql or EXECUTE) executes in a separate context from the main stored procedure; it executes in the security context of the user that executes the stored procedure and not in the security context of the owner of the stored procedure.

This is also discussed in the (more current) Microsoft Docs article:

Writing Secure Dynamic SQL in SQL Server

Executing dynamically created SQL statements in your procedural code breaks the ownership chain, causing SQL Server to check the permissions of the caller against the objects being accessed by the dynamic SQL.


It sounds like there are different owners of the procedure as well as the underlying object that the SELECT is querying. This all has to do with Ownership Chains. See the below example for a brief explanation and demonstration to what I'm talking about:

use YourTestDatabase;
go

create login TestLogin1
with 
    password = 'password',
    check_policy = off;
go

create user TestUser1
for login TestLogin1;
go

create table Table1
(
    id int identity(1, 1) not null,
    SomeString varchar(30) not null
        default replicate('a', 30)
);
go

insert into Table1
values(default);
go 10

create proc Proc1
as
    select *
    from Table1;
go


grant execute
on Proc1
to TestUser1;
go

-- this works because permissions aren't checked
--  on Table1.  That is why TestUser1 can get the
--  result set without SELECT permissions on Table1
execute as user = 'TestUser1';
go

exec Proc1;
go

revert;
go

-- let's change the owner of Proc1 so that the 
--  ownership chain is broken and permissions are
--  checked on Table1
alter authorization
on Proc1
to TestUser1;
go

-- this no longer works because permissions are now
--  checked on Table1, which TestUser1 does not have
--  SELECT permissions on
execute as user = 'TestUser1';
go

exec Proc1;
go

revert;
go

If you want to find out the ownership of your objects, you can run the below query (obviously with changing the WHERE clause to include your specific object names):

select
    o.name,
    o.type_desc,
    case
        when o.principal_id is null
            then sp.name
        else dp.name
    end as principal_name
from sys.objects o
inner join sys.schemas s
on o.schema_id = s.schema_id
left join sys.database_principals dp
on o.principal_id = dp.principal_id
left join sys.database_principals sp
on s.principal_id = sp.principal_id
where o.name in
(
    'Table1',
    'Proc1'
);