Schema, User, Account: Different? Same? This is a question commonly asked by people coming from other RDBMS's. Schema and user, as well as account, in most contexts refer to the same thing in Oracle, but not in other RDBMS's. Oracle documentation 11gR2: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e40540/intro.htm#CNCPT939 "a database schema is a collection of logical data structures, or schema objects. A database schema is owned by a database user and has the same name as the user name." 12cR1: http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/CNCPT/tablecls.htm#CNCPT111 "A database schema is a logical container for data structures, called schema objects... A database user has a password and various database privileges. Each user owns a single schema, which has the same name as the user. The schema contains the data for the user owning the schema." In linguistics, there's a distinction between meaning (or sense) and referent. We can say these words *refer* to the same thing in Oracle, but cannot say they *mean* the same thing, when "mean" is strictly taken to be a linguistic term. But we're all Oracle professionals in industry, not in academia. There's not much practical significance in debating the distinction among "user", "schema", "account", apart from the SQL statement CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION (see [note]). One interesting question. Oracle has this SQL: ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA = ... which allows you to omit the owner of the object in subsequent SQLs. If you were to design or re-design this SQL, would you call it current_schema or current_user, or even current_owner or current_account? Practically, it makes no difference. But if we insist on the *meaning* of the word, this is a good time to make the terminology "right". _____________ [note] Oracle SQL supports this statement: CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION ... (http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SQLRF/statements_6016.htm) where the word "schema" obviously refers to something else. As far as I understand it, this SQL combines multiple DDLs into one single transaction; if one fails, all fail. This syntax is probably how other RDBMS's understand the concept "schema". Oracle includes it just to show its compliance with the industry standard, with the benefit of a little bit yet rarely used convenience to the users.