User Login and Password Management

The given user rights regulate access to cell data and to selected system operations. Jedox stores level 1 and level 2 rights objects and users and their passwords in the Jedox In-Memory DB system. For information on regulating user access to Jedox data, see Administration of User Rights. To create a special Jedox administrator account with limited access rights, see Admin User Accounts.

Requests for a Jedox database can only be made with a valid login. These logins must be adequately protected with passwords. The Jedox databases are special CSV files in the directory ..\olap\data. To avoid unwanted access to these files, this directory should be protected using the existing security options of the operating system and additional encryption algorithms.

By default, the password for the admin user, as well for other users, is stored within the System database in system cube #_USER_USER_PROPERTIES. The password is stored using a PBKDF2 algorithm with more than 310,000 iterations and random salt. The cube #_USER_USER_PROPERTIES corresponds to the file database_CUBE_0.csv. Everyone who has read/write access to these files can see/change the content. Therefore, it is necessary to protect this system database accordingly.

Note: to use the PBKDF2 algorithm, you need to change the passwords stored in older versions of Jedox. You only have to do this once.

You cannot retrieve user passwords from the System database via the In-Memory DB API. The API calls that retrieve the cell value of the "password" element return an access right error for anyone making the call, regardless of the user rights.

If you need password retrieval for debugging purposes, you can enable it in the palo.ini configuration file by setting the following entry: enable-password-retrieval.

Note: passwords cannot be changed through direct cell writeback. They can only be changed in Jedox Web, Excel Add-in, or by using the PHP API function CHANGE_PASSWORD. You can also change individual passwords with a Groovy Job in Integrator.

Setting a password policy

The parameter password-pattern in palo.ini allows you to change the password settings concerning the password length and the password pattern/complexity. Any attempt to change the password that does not match the defined pattern will result in an error displayed in the Change Password dialog. The password pattern can be defined by the key password-pattern <regular_expression>. If the new password does not match the pattern, an error message (error code 1004) is returned.

Currently, Jedox users are not automatically prompted to change their password.

For Jedox users, passwords by default must have the following elements:
  • at least 10 characters
  • at least one digit
  • at least one of the symbols !@#$%^&*
  • at least one uppercase or lowercase letter [A-Z] [a-z]
  • cannot contain a period or space

The password pattern as a regular expression is:

(?=^.{10,}$)(?=.*\d)(?=.*[!@#$%^&*]+)(?![.\n])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[a-z]).*$

Note for Jedox Web users: in the Jedox Web connection dialog, mark the Use login credentials checkbox to use the assigned rights. Otherwise, Jedox Web will use the rights of the user name entered for the connection. Access rights can be defined for connections in a similar way to other objects, on the Security dialog of a connection. For example, a connection that statically applies to a user with high-level access (e.g. for Jedox Integrator) can be set to be inaccessible to lower-level user groups.

Unprotected connections can be used by any given Jedox user, such as in the OLAP-related dialogs (e.g. Paste View).

Note: in case the repetitive incorrect login attempts of a user have resulted in a waiting period, the admin can reset both the "waiting time counter", and "max failed login attempts" by resetting the user's password.

Updated March 19, 2024