KB-1274 "ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied" error thrown during application server startup

Symptoms

18.3 and Later

The application server fails to startup with the following message in the tomcat-stdOut.log file located in the <APPIAN_HOME>/logs directory:

WARNING [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup Unexpected exception resolving reference java.sql.SQLException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied)

18.2 and Earlier

The application server fails to startup with the following error in the server.log located in the <JBOSS_HOME>/standalone/logs directory:

WARN  [org.jboss.jca.core.connectionmanager.pool.strategy.OnePool] (ServerService Thread Pool -- 55) IJ000604: Throwable while attempting to get a new connection: null: javax.resource.ResourceException: Could not create connection
    at org.jboss.jca.adapters.jdbc.xa.XAManagedConnectionFactory.getXAManagedConnection(XAManagedConnectionFactory.java:525)
    at org.jboss.jca.adapters.jdbc.xa.XAManagedConnectionFactory.createManagedConnection(XAManagedConnectionFactory.java:434)
...
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

Cause

There are two possible causes for this issue:

1. The username and/or password the application server is using to connect to the database is not correct.
2. A special character is included in the password, which can cause issues when the application server attempts to connect to Oracle databases.

Action

1. Check that you can login directly to the database using the username and plain text password. If not, update the username and password to the correct credentials.
2. Ensure that the password the application server is using to connect to the Oracle database does not contain a special character and that the credentials are correct. For Appian 18.3 and later, the credentials can be verified in the suite.xml file located in the <APPIAN_HOME>/tomcat/apache-tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost/ directory. For Appian 18.2 and earlier, the credentials can be verified in the standalone.xml file location in the <JBOSS_HOME>/standalone/configuration directory.
3. If special characters cannot be removed from the password, ensure to escape them. For example, use "&amp" for & and "&dollar" for $. 

Affected Versions

This article applies to all versions of Appian using Oracle as a database.