Use a password file to obfuscate the database password

About this task

To hide the password in the JDBC URL, you can place the password in an external file and reference this file from the database-config.xml file.

Procedure

  1. Add the password-file attribute to the <dbcp-connection-pool> element within the <database> element.
  2. Set the value of password-file to the absolute path of the password file.
  3. Replace the password value in the jdbc-url connection specification with a ${password} placeholder.

    At run time, PolicyCenter reads the password from the file.

Results

After you complete this process, your database specification looks similar to the following:
Oracle
<database name="PolicyCenterDatabase" driver="dbcp"  dbtype="oracle">  
  <dbcp-connection-pool 
        jdbc-url="jdbc:oracle:thin:USER/${password}@ORACLEDB:PORT:INSTANCE"
        password-file="c:\secure\password.txt" />
</database>
SQL Server
<database name="PolicyCenterDatabase" driver="dbcp" 
 dbtype="sqlserver">
  <dbcp-connection-pool 
        jdbc-url="jdbc:sqlserver://HOSTNAME:1433;databaseName=pc;
              user=pcUser;password=${password}" 
        password-file="c:\secure\password.txt" />
</database>