Using at sign "@" in password Oracle Database/Forms

Question

We have an application running in Oracle Forms which connects to an Oracle database (12c). We've always had issues with using the "@" sign in passwords so we always instructed our users not to use the "@" sign. Is there a way we can use this? Maybe some modification to the formsweb.cfg or something else? We connect to an Oracle Database via Oracle Forms.

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards,

Roël

Answer 1

@ is a reserved character in an Oracle connection string, which in its most basic form looks like username/password@tnsname. The ability to use @ in a password is usually dependent on how the client presents you credentials to the database.

If the client encapsulates the username and password in double-quotes, like this: "username"/"password"@tnsname, then the @ in the password is taken as a literal and works fine. If the password is not delimited with double quotes, then it will be taken as the end of the password and what follows is presumed to be the tnsname or network data for the database.

Given that you are using a packaged application (Forms), you probably don't have the ability to alter how the application is presenting your credentials to the database, but that is the kind of option you would need to be looking for. Note that even if you do find a way to alter this, it will only apply to your specific application: connecting to the database with some other client might not produce the same results.

In my personal experience, using Oracle for 30+ years now, the only special character that never has a problem in any client OS/software architecture is the underscore: _. All others run a risk of being incorrectly interpreted by the client OS or Oracle's client drivers if used on a command line or without quotes, even though the database technically accepts all of them.

• rkonings: Thank you very much for this very clear answer! I will take a look with the supplier of the application how they have programmed this in Oracle Forms and if possible we can test encapsulating the credentials!