Jared, I was not aware of those possibilities, I will take a look, thank you. Bill Wagman Univ. of California at Davis IET Campus Data Center wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx (530) 754-6208 From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:59 AM To: William Wagman Cc: Niall Litchfield; Oracle-L Freelists Subject: Re: login.sql equivalent for RMAN On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:44 AM, William Wagman <wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: The problem is not so much platform as much as wanting to separate the passwords from the script. Indeed, Jared's suggestion will work but I still have the passwords in the RMAN script which is what I am trying to get away from. So, there are two problems you are trying to solve. That script was just to demo the connection process. Personally, I use the Password server from "Perl for Oracle DBA's" It uses that 'Perl' language that Niall referred to. :) The version in the book uses plain text config file. It was 'enhanced' sometime after publication of the book to allow storing the config file with the passwords in an encrypted format using RC4. RC4 is old, but still fairly robust. There are commercial password servers that have similar capabilities. Password Manager Pro for instance has facilities to retrieve passwords from the command line for use in scripts. Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist