Informix Error -273: No UPDATE permission for table/column.

Cause and resolution

No UPDATE permission for table/column.

The person who created this table has not granted Update privilege to your account name or to the public for the table or the column. The owner of the table or the DBA must grant this privilege before you can update a row in this table or update the column.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-273 is the UPDATE-privilege sibling of -272: the account attempting the update was never granted UPDATE privilege on the table or the specific column being modified.

The account lacks UPDATE privilege on the table — the table owner or DBA never granted it.
Column-level UPDATE privilege missing specifically, if privileges are managed per-column rather than at the table level.
A newly created table where the DBA or owner forgot to grant UPDATE to relevant users, roles, or PUBLIC.

Solutions / Resolution

Have the table owner or DBA grant UPDATE privilege to the account (or to PUBLIC) for the table or the specific column.
Check whether privileges are granted at the column level and whether the specific column needs its own explicit grant.

Examples

Granting UPDATE

GRANT UPDATE ON orders TO app_user;

Column-specific grant

GRANT UPDATE (status) ON orders TO app_user;
-- grants UPDATE only on the status column, not the whole table

Diagnostic Checks

Check current privileges granted on the table or column in question.

Related Errors / Related Topics

-272 — "No SELECT permission for table/column." The direct sibling — same general permissions family, for a different privilege.
-201 — "A syntax error has occurred." The general SQL-parsing-error family this fits into.

Check whether the grant needed is table-wide or column-specific — the fix is the same shape as -272, just for UPDATE instead of SELECT.