best way to store an oracle login/passwd in a startup script?

We have a webapp (under apache) that needs to connect to the database. Of course, since it starts up automatically, we don't have a place where a user can type in a login name and password.

An obvious solution is just to embed the name and password as part of the connect string in the apache config file:

        DB_CONNECT_STRING=myname/mypass_at_myoracle

Is there a better way to do this?

Many TIA!
Mark

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Mark Harrison
Pixar Animation Studios