>Just nitpicking your code:
>the "release oPassword" will not fire when oPassword is already NULL when entering the if-clause...

It will not fire any methods. It's just releasing the variable (which points to a .null. at that moment), so it is doing something... which can't create an error. You can release anything, even a nonexistent variable, and it won't error out. The only way a release of a variable can cause an error is when that variable is the only reference to an object, which causes the object's reference count to fall to zero, which triggers releasing the object - and then if the object is so fucked up that it errors somewhere in its .destroy(), .unload() or those of its members, then yes, it can.