I've put together a Visual FoxPro 6 front end application to a Oracle 8 database. My VFP application is working great due to FoxPro's powerful post processing capabilities even for extremely large queries (note I wouldn't want to overload a poor little mdb file).

Unfortunately, I have one issue relating to passwords that is causing problems. Right now, it appears that once the Oracle password has expired, the SQLCONNECT() command in VFP will not work. I was hoping to get a different return code and still connect. Then I could prompt the user to enter a new password and update it in my VFP app.

I know how to obtain the date of the password expiration, so I could warn users to change their password before it expires. Unfortunately, some users will only occasionally use the application will come back to an already expired password.

I can always fire up SQL*PLUS automatically, and have the user set a new password, but I can't figure out a way to separate a connectivity problem from an expired or wrong password. (also note that the user must not be using the 8.0.5.0.0 version of SQL*PLUS that has password bugs)

Any advice anyone has (Mark?) for password maintenance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance
David Greenberg