Using SQLDriverConnect with special characters in password fails, same info with ODBC (Oracle instant client) works fine

Question

Hi,
on a windows 2008 machine that has the Oracle instant client 11_1 installed (11.01.00.06) i am calling SQLDriverConnect in the following way:
std::string str = "Driver={Oracle in instantclient11_1};Dbq=//10.10.101.66:1521/orcl;;Uid=myUser;pwd=a;b";
odbcRc = SQLDriverConnect(hdbc, NULL, (SQLTCHAR*)str.c_str(), str.size(), (SQLTCHAR*)szConnStrOut, 1024, &cbConnStrOut, SQL_DRIVER_NOPROMPT)) == SQL_ERROR);
as long as the password contains no special chars (namely semicolon) it works fine. but when I try to use special chars in the password It stops working, with an invalid username/password error.
State: 28000 Native error: 1017 Message: [Oracle][ODBC][Ora]ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied
i tried different variations of adding " (\") over the password, over the entire pwd=a;b or braces { but nothing seems to work.
the thing is that using ODBC works! what I did was:
open ODBC, go to System DSN tab, add "Oracle in instantclient11_1", then fill the following information:
Data source name: Anything
TNS Service Name: //10.10.101.66:1521/orcl
User ID: myUser
then i press test connection, enter the password "a;b"
and it works!
I cannot figure out what's my problem.
Thanks,
Roy.

Answer 1

I've created your test table in my Oracle database using this extra character and I'm able to describe it properly.
SQL> desc test;
Name Null? Type
ATTIVITÀ VARCHAR2(40)
My character set being used is:
SQL> select * from v$nls_parameters;
NLS_CHARACTERSET
WE8ISO8859P15
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET
AL16UTF16
NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS
BYTE
So as long as it doesn't work for you in your native Oracle database I don't think it would work with DG4ODBC. So yes, it would be best to log a service request so that the Oracle database support can check out the NLS issue.
Edited by: kgronau on Sep 28, 2011 9:21 AM
To be complete here the describe of the MySQL table native and using DG4ODBC:
mysql> create table TEST (attività Varchar(40));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> desc TEST;
---------------------------------------------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
---------------------------------------------------+
| attività | varchar(40) | YES | | NULL | |
---------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Wed Sep 28 09:20:17 2011
SQL> desc "gateway"."TEST"@MYSQL_DG4ODBC_EMGTW_1122_DB;
Name Null? Type
attività VARCHAR2(80)
So in general it should work.