Are there any limitations for characters in a user password for BI? I have a user with a ',' in the password and it does not appear to work (invalid user name/password). Please advise.
Thanks for everyones support.
Paul

This message has been edited. Last edited by: paulI,

I don't know which characters are valid, but I can see why the ',' is not - in some environments, putting a comma in the password tells WebFOCUS to send a change password request to the host...

The only character specifically restricted by IB is the ','

Other characters can or cannot be used depending on the authentication system
i.e. operating system , DBMS etc.

Officially for example Windows since version 2000 & XP have supported all characters in the UTF-16
character table for use in passwords.

However I have seen cases reported where WebFOCUS does not handle them all correctly.

As others have said, the comma is used on the Reporting Server as a password delimiter so that:

OLD_PASSWORD,NEW_PASSWORD

Is interpreted as changing the password from OLD_PASSWORD to NEW_PASSWORD.

While the character for this is a comma by default it can be changed by the setting:
password_change_delimiter

To a different character, as is documented
here

If you don't expect to need to support users to be able to change their passwords, I know of at least one WebFOCUS admin who used a text editor to set the value of password_change_delimiter to a non-printable character. In doing so he made all printable characters possible to use, but also disabled the change password capability.

NOTE: When changing password_change_delimiter, you must change the IBIC_passdelim on the WebFOCUS Client as well. The value of IBIC_passdelim can be set within the site.wfs file and made to match what is on the Reporting Server.

The comma should be possible to be used in a password in Managed Reporting or other areas of the product. It is just the Reporting Server where it should be a problem.

If you encounter any other characters that don't work, you should open a case with Techsupport as it is most likely a bug. From time to time we've found problems with different characters.

Great information dlogan.

Great information and explanations. Thank you all very much.