The difference between SELECT ANY DICTIONARY and SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE

I've seen some DBAs confused about these two "privileges" or "roles".

SELECT ANY DICTIONARY is a System Privilege.

SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE is a Role you would see in DBA_ROLES.  However, querying DBA_SYS_PRIVS does NOT show what privileges are granted to this role.

SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE predates the SELECT ANY DICTIONARY privilege.

The SELECT ANY DICTIONARY privilege grants Read access on Data Dictionary tables owned by SYS.  The SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE role grants Read access to Data Dictionary (DBA_%) and Performance (V$%) views.

Here is a short demo :

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Thu Feb 6 07:48:15 2014

Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Enter user-name: / as sysdba

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> create user sad identified by sad;

User created.

SQL> grant create session, select any dictionary to sad;

Grant succeeded.

SQL> create user scr identified by scr;

User created.

SQL> grant create session, select_catalog_role to scr;

Grant succeeded.

SQL> 
SQL> connect sad/sad
Connected.
SQL> select count(*) from sys.user$;

  COUNT(*)
----------
       115

SQL> select count(*) from dba_users;

  COUNT(*)
----------
        53

SQL> connect scr/scr
Connected.
SQL> select count(*) from sys.user$;
select count(*) from sys.user$
                         *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00942: table or view does not exist


SQL> select count(*) from dba_users;

  COUNT(*)
----------
        53

SQL> 

If you needed to grant a new / junior DBA or a Consultant the privilege to query the Data Dictionary and Performance views, which would you grant ?

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