Oracle Password

Handle Oracle Password:
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Do you know what to do in case as a DBA you forgot the Oracle database accounts' password.

There is a very simple way to handle this issue. Now let me explain the situation here. As a DBA you might be handling thousands of Oracle Database Accounts and might be maintaining the passwords. Sometimes you might needs some account passwords to handle the issue of application users and everybody knows it is very hard to remember application users' passwords. So in such situations when you need the password and you do not have it. Also you do not want to change the password as it might affect the application users and you do not want to spend time sending emails to application users to collect the password. There you go..An easiest way to handle such Oracle passwords:

SQL> Select username,password from DBA_USERS where username='user';

Output will be:
Username and encrypted password. Save these information.

SQL> Alter user "user" identified by xyz123;

Output will be:
The user's password is changed to xyz123.

Now connect the user with password xyz123 and complete your maintenance acitivity.

After your maintenance activity is over, Change the password to the old password and you are all set. No issues for anybody.

SQL> alter user "user" identified by values 'encrypted password which you collected earlier';
SQL>Select username,password from DBA_USERS where username='user';

You are all set and it matches with the old information.

Let me give you an example for your ref:

SQL> select username, password from dba_users where username='SQLTXPLAIN';
USERNAME PASSWORD
------------------------------ ------------------------------
SQLTXPLAIN 04F1603C1F2033F3
SQL> conn SQLTXPLAIN/webex123
Connected.
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit ProductionWith the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Data Miningand Real Application Testing options

sqlplus '/as sysdba'
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Thu May 14 13:12:07 2009
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit ProductionWith the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Data Miningand Real Application Testing options
SQL> alter user SQLTXPLAIN identified by test123;
User altered.
SQL> select username, password from dba_users where username='SQLTXPLAIN';
USERNAME PASSWORD
------------------------------ ------------------------------
SQLTXPLAIN 6CFD89ED56C7C349
SQL> conn SQLTXPLAIN/test123
Connected.
SQL> exit
Disconnected from Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit ProductionWith the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Data Miningand Real Application Testing options

sqlplus '/as sysdba'
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Thu May 14 13:12:43 2009
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.
Connected to:Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit ProductionWith the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP, Data Miningand Real Application Testing options

SQL> alter user SQLTXPLAIN identified by values '04F1603C1F2033F3';
User altered.
SQL> conn SQLTXPLAIN/webex123
Connected.
SQL> show user
USER is "SQLTXPLAIN"
SQL> select username, password from dba_users where username='SQLTXPLAIN';
USERNAME PASSWORD
------------------------------ ------------------------------
SQLTXPLAIN 04F1603C1F2033F3
SQL>