PeopleSoft HRMS w/ Oracle 8i database

Question

I would like to know the following from any DBAs out there:
We are using PeopleSoft HRMS 7.5 with Oracle 8i on Sun Solaris
2.6. We have a 3 tier architecture.
My questions are regarding user authentication. In yur shops are
the users authenticated at the database level also. Iunderstand
that with PeopleSoft's architecture only dummy accounts are
created in Oracle, by which you connect and disconnect to the
database. I am not sure I understand this.
Also is the OPS$ORacle account used widely. You can only use this
account if you are logged on the ORacle UNIX account. How risky
is not disabling this account if you have turned off remote
authentication.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
sorry, I can't see your detailled questions. I'll try some answers:
PeopleSoft/3-Tier/Oracle-dummy-user:
When you login into PeopleSoft application, you have an account
with username, password. Within the PS application you have
role(s) and fine granulated rights to do or not to do, e.g. open
panels, change data, create/change/delete other accounts and so
on. The roles and rights are all managed within the PeopleSoft
application. All informations concerning roles/rights/accounts...
are stored in the database, but managed by the PS application.
The PS middle-tier (application server) makes and holds
connections to the underlying database only by one or two
database user accounts (people and sysadm). These user(s) have
rights on all PS tables a.s.o.
OPS$ account:
As far as I know, when using OPS$ account but remote
authentication turned off, the only "risk" is that a user with
the corresponding server account (OPS$test => unix login "test")
can login without further password into the Oracle database.
Hope this helps,
Thomas.