We recommend using SQL-driven workflow. Both of the configuration methods work simultaneously, so if you use the server configuration files for managing accounts and access rights, you can smoothly switch to SQL-driven workflow.
By default, the ClickHouse server provides the `default` user account which is not allowed using SQL-driven access control and account management but has all the rights and permissions. The `default` user account is used in any cases when the username is not defined, for example, at login from client or in distributed queries. In distributed query processing a default user account is used, if the configuration of the server or cluster does not specify the [user and password](../engines/table-engines/special/distributed.md) properties.
2. Log in to the `default` user account and create all the required users. Don’t forget to create an administrator account (`GRANT ALL ON *.* TO admin_user_account WITH GRANT OPTION`).
3. [Restrict permissions](../operations/settings/permissions-for-queries.md#permissions_for_queries) for the `default` user and disable SQL-driven access control and account management for it.
- You can grant permissions for databases and tables even if they do not exist.
- If a table was deleted, all the privileges that correspond to this table are not revoked. This means that even if you create a new table with the same name later, all the privileges remain valid. To revoke privileges corresponding to the deleted table, you need to execute, for example, the `REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON db.table FROM ALL` query.
Privileges can be granted to a user account by the [GRANT](../sql-reference/statements/grant.md) query or by assigning [roles](#role-management). To revoke privileges from a user, ClickHouse provides the [REVOKE](../sql-reference/statements/revoke.md) query. To list privileges for a user, use the [SHOW GRANTS](../sql-reference/statements/show.md#show-grants-statement) statement.
Settings can be configured differently: for a user account, in its granted roles and in settings profiles. At user login, if a setting is configured for different access entities, the value and constraints of this setting are applied as follows (from higher to lower priority):
2. The settings of default roles of the user account. If a setting is configured in some roles, then order of the setting application is undefined.
3. The settings from settings profiles assigned to a user or to its default roles. If a setting is configured in some profiles, then order of setting application is undefined.
4. Settings applied to all the server by default or from the [default profile](../operations/server-configuration-parameters/settings.md#default-profile).
Privileges can be granted to a role by the [GRANT](../sql-reference/statements/grant.md) query. To revoke privileges from a role ClickHouse provides the [REVOKE](../sql-reference/statements/revoke.md) query.
Row policy is a filter that defines which of the rows are available to a user or a role. Row policy contains filters for one particular table, as well as a list of roles and/or users which should use this row policy.
Row policies makes sense only for users with readonly access. If user can modify table or copy partitions between tables, it defeats the restrictions of row policies.
Settings profile is a collection of [settings](../operations/settings/index.md). Settings profile contains settings and constraints, as well as a list of roles and/or users to which this profile is applied.
ClickHouse stores access entity configurations in the folder set in the [access_control_path](../operations/server-configuration-parameters/settings.md#access_control_path) server configuration parameter.
By default, SQL-driven access control and account management is disabled for all users. You need to configure at least one user in the `users.xml` configuration file and set the value of the [access_management](../operations/settings/settings-users.md#access_management-user-setting) setting to 1.
