OPS$ User question

Question

Please consider the following case :
I have a system where all its application users are OPS$ users , which mean that they get there credential from the OS.
The users are create as followed :
create user YYYYY
identified externally
default tablespace users
temporary tablespace temporary_ts
profile APP_PROFILE;We are changing passwords in the windows OS every 90 days.
Before changing the password in my Win7 PC , i run the following statment :
SYS> select  u.name username, ctime creation_date, ptime paswd_change_date, exptime expiration_date
  2  from    sys.user$ u, dba_users s
  3  where   u.user#= s.user_id
  4  and     u.ptime < sysdate - 90
  5  and     s.username  like 'OPS$YOAVB%'
  6  order by name;
USERNAME                       CREATION_ PASWD_CHA EXPIRATIO
OPS$YOAVB                      23-FEB-10 23-FEB-10Than i changed the password , reconnect to oracle database , and rerun the very same statment again.
Nothing changed .
The ptime column did not changed .
Any idea whey it didnot changed ?
Thanks

Answer 1

First of all: referring in any query to a physical table owned by SYS (as signified by the name ending in a $) is a bad idea, as Oracle doesn't guarantee their existence.
Secondly: you don't seem to realize external authentication means the Oracle password is meaningless, and a place holder only, as passwords can not be null.
You shouldn't sync the password of the Oracle account with the OS account, as Oracle doesn't check the password, as the OS authenticates the user.
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA