This feature might be great for OLAP systems, but it's awful for OLTP systems. The last thing I want is debug permission errors bubbling from my database into the application layer. It may not be as efficient, but you should always manage your ACL rules in the application layer if you're building an OLTP app.
I speak from personal experience. If you know a good usecase for ACL in database for OLTP workflows, I'm all ears.
Here's one that's meaningful to me. We have a single database with five different applications that access it, each of them managed by a separate team. By enforcing access constraints in the database we guarantee the access constraints will be applied in all cases. It is difficult to ensure that in application code managed by separate teams.
(Just to be clear: I don't think your advice is poor, I just wanted to give an example of a case where it isn't universally applicable.)
Are there any risks to changing ACL rules on a production database server from a stability perspective?
i've never seen anything impact postgres stability. they test their code.
i've made DDL changes on live systems; that seems far more concerning than ACLs.
An upside to using db to handle data permissions is the data has the same protections if you are accessing with direct SQL or using an app. Also, those permissions would persist with the data in restored backups.
I’m not advocating this and think for OLTP, building RBAC in the app layer is almost always a better idea, but these would be some benefits.
Better security guarantees, for sure, but if an unauthorized user gains direct access to your database, you might have bigger problems from a security perspective.