Possible? Manually set EXPTIME in USER$ to set EXPIRY_DATE in DBA_USERS

I know that it's possible, though *highly* (and rightly) discouraged, to tamper with Oracle's underlying database definition tables (meta data), owned by SYS. But just maybe...

At present, I'm not using a profile other than DEFAULT. I'm planning to implement a site-specific profile, complete with password lifetime, soon. In the meantime, however, I want to force my users to change their passwords... yet Oracle gives me just one option to do so: ALTER USER username PASSWORD EXPIRE. This takes effect immediately. I'd prefer to give the users some warning, and allow them to warm up to the idea. I'd also like to allow my recently-written procedure to locate upcoming EXPIRY_DATEs and send email (using UTL_SMTP) to those who will be expiring soon.

So... my question to the experts: can I do the following and get away with it? (Assumes I'm logged in as SYS, of course.)

    UPDATE user$
    SET exptime = SYSDATE + 10
    WHERE type# = 1 /* user acct */
    AND name = username;

Alternately... are there better ways to handle this?

Thanks. Received on Sun Mar 31 2002 - 14:31:40 CST