Re: OS Authentication and ODBC

<advice below pertains to Access 97 (Jet 3.5.*.*)>

The answer to your problem is easy - just replicate the username and password that you need with Oracle in your Access workgroup file.

Why do you want to authenticate to Oracle using OS authentication?

It won't save you a logon if you need to use Access (as Access - ODBC - Oracle is a completely different 'pathway' to the database).

Or to put it another way, If OS authentication was planned for authentication with Oracle, then to save another logon it would have to work with Access also. Now Access 97 has nothing to do with W32 OS authentication.

It uses its own security workgroup files as I'm sure you know. (*.mdw files).

If the following registry paramter (or variant for your platform) :- "
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\JET\3.5\Engines\ODBC\TryJetAuth "
 is set to 1 (the default), Access tries to authenticate an ODBC link to Oracle firstly by trying the Access username and password.

If you are using the default security workgroup file in Access, you won't normally be asked to login to Access.

I recommend however that you implement your own security workgroup file.

Then you can create an account in this which mirrors a plain-vanilla oracle username / password.

I am willing to stand corrected, but I think in essence, it boils down to this; unless you can make some sort of link between the OS authentication system and Access, you will always have to give Access a username / password pair. (Either because you need to logon to Access because you are using a custom *.mdw file or because the ODBC driver needs you to give it a username / password pair when you try and go out to Oracle).

The security implications of the above topics are not investigated and no implied recommendation of any method should be taken from the above.

David P.

Oracle Certified DBA.

Ed Stevens wrote:
>
> Is anyone using MS Access to front end an Oracle database using
> Oracle's OS authentication? I finally got all the pieces is place to
> do a successful OS authenticated logon to the Oracle database, using
> SQL*Plus. The next step of this particular assignment is to do it from
> MS Access. Whenever I try to create the link from Access97 to Oracle,
> the ODBC pops up asking for userid and password. This happens with
> either the Oracle or the MS supplied ODBC driver. I've been tasked
> with finding a way to bypass this.
>
> --
> Ed Stevens
> (Opinions are not necessarily those of my employer)
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Received on Thu May 04 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT