SQL Server User-Defined Data Types Not Visible to MS Access on Linked Table Refresh

Had one of those, "am I on crazy pills?!" problems the past few weeks. In an MS Access database I had a whole slew of SQL Server Linked Tables that included User-Defined Data Types(UDT). The UDTs were mostly auditing fields that referenced defaults to pull in the system.user and current datetime.

Everything worked great.

That was until I added a field and asked a user (with very elevated privileges) to refresh the linked tables. They did, but the audit fields referencing the user-defined types disappeared.

At first, I thought it was some silliness in their file-based DSN, but even using my connection (with Windows-based security... so it pointed to their account) the audit fields remained hidden.

To make the whole story more perverse, if I used the same connection logged in as me (I am a dbo) the tables refreshed with the audit fields and they could also see them.

After much googling I finally stumbled upon this post and this msdn article which indicate that user-defined types have permissions including: CREATE, GRANT, DENY, ALTER, CONTROL, TAKE OWNERSHIP, REFERENCES, EXECUTE, VIEW DEFINITION and REVOKE.

To set permissions to allow anyone to view a user-defined datatype, use the following

grant execute on TYPE::[dbo].[user_data_type] to public;

Or the appropriate user or role.




References:

• "Microsoft SQL User Defined Types". My Real Life Work, Charles Solar. 2009-08-21. 
• "User-Defined Table Types", SQL Server Books Online (MSDN). Sep. 30, 2009.