Clarity

Greetings,

I hope everyone is having a spectacular Summer! Seeking some advice...please and thank you...

Environment: 12.1.1 (Oracle)

Issue: since going live in February, on (2) separate occasions, when attempting to re-start bg services in Production instance, we encounter

FATAL 2012-06-15 19:48:24,135 [http-80-1] union.persistence (none:none:none) Failed to initialize Context properties java.sql.SQLException: [CA Clarity][Oracle JDBC Driver][Oracle]ORA-28000: the account is locked

Background: If the number of failed login attempts exceeds 10, the account gets locked and the background services won't re-start until the DBA issues alter user userid account unlock -> then the background service starts successfully. "Clarity" is the Login Name (nsa, Database settings). "Clarity owns" the tables. Concurrent database connections are set to UNLIMITED. Number of failed login attempts to lock after 10.

DBA: "I have queried several times at the LCOUNT for the Clarity user. In querying the failed logon attempts, I saw that the count is set at '2'. Then a short time later, I checked again and it was '0'. A few minutes later, it was at '1'. According to the information that I've found, the user has to make 10 continuously failed logon attempts, in order for the Clarity account to lock. The account will lock on the 11th non-successful attempt. However, if there is one successful attempt to connect, the value is reset to '0'."

Troubleshooting: Created a case with CA Support and in terms of resolution, the case is going absolutely nowhere. :sad According to CA Support, everybody thinks it is DB (oracle) settings issue. Support cannot tell us what Clarity process uses the nsa account to attempt to connect to the database. We have no custom scripts running. We have not modified the Clarity database. Only customizations are through Studio and some custom crystal reports.

The positive is we have a workaround. The negative is the unknown cause and possibility we the app could be down without notice. Has anyone run into this locking scenario? Does anyone know what Clarity process is causing the account to get locked?

Thanks!

Jay

Hi All,

Any advice to offer Jay here?

Thanks!
Chris

Hi Jay,

You said you have Crystal Reports. Could it be that the DB connection you are using in Crystal report has an incorrect password and running report consecutively for 10 times might have your account locked? (Assuming you use the same DB user for reports)

I couldn't thing of anything else.

Good Luck.

Pavan

Hey Pavan,

Thank you for your response! Your suggestion is a very good one. We did consider the crystal report desktop users and they are using a different account name (read only) to attach to the database. The question is what uses the nsa login name value in nsa's database config since this value is the account which got locked (as logged in app-niku.log)...I am now wondering if the Oracle Table Analyze job could be the culprit.

We have an open case with CA Support that continues to not have any traction. :sad

Again, I appreciate your suggestion as to root cause of this issue.

Have a great day,

Jay

Hi Jay,

One suggestion, if you ask your DBA to setup audit parameter, this might help you to track whats causing the account to be locked.

Hope this helps.


Regards,

Pavan

Hi Pavan,

Yet another great suggestion!

I floated the audit idea past the DBA and basically his response was concern of overhead associated with the auditing function. He suggested having a DBA available the next time we have a scheduled outage. When it's time to restore services, in the event background services won't start (and the account is locked), the workaround is simply to unlock the account by alter user userid account unlock.

This remains an open case with CA Support.

Thanks again for your feedback and have a great day!:smile

Jay

Hi Jay,

I just wanted to check in on this one to see if you were able to resolve with Support's help. If so please post what the resolution was. :grin:

Thanks!
Chris

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately, we still don't have root cause of the problem identified. We are In the process of scheduling a live meeting w/Support which will likely take place in the next couple of business days. Will report back when we have resolution.

Have a great day,

Jay

Several months have passed and this issue has not resurfaced. I believe a crystal reports developer likely caused the original problem.

A great day to all,

Jay