Ask Tom "connecting as another user without their...":
"So, this is still 'valid', but there are other ways in the year 2007. proxy users for example, consider: ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> alter user scott grant connect through ops$tkyte; User altered. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte[scott]/foobar; Connected. scott%ORA10GR2> select user from dual; USER ------------------------------ SCOTT scott%ORA10GR2> connect scott/foobar; ERROR: ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied Warning: You are no longer connected to ORACLE. scott%ORA10GR2> connect ops$tkyte/foobar; Connected. ops$tkyte%ORA10GR2> "