Oracle Database Discussions

Good evening,

I was trying to set the Database Preferred Credentials in Enterprise Manager (Preferences -> Preferred Credentials) and ran into a case that I do not understand. Please refer to the "diagram" below (which tries to mimick EM's screen - very crudely). I show the Name and Host fields separately because those are constant.

Name             Host       

orcl.john.local  Oracle2Day1.john.local

the above fields are followed by (including my initial input):

   UserName  UserName   SYSDBA     SYSDBA    Host      Host
             Password   userName   Password  UserName  Password

   scott     abc123     sys        abc123 

When I enter the above and press the "Test" button, everything works fine. I figured that if I could connect as SCOTT, I should also be able to connect as SYS (not a good idea but, this is an exercise), so I tried this:

   UserName  UserName   SYSDBA     SYSDBA    Host      Host
             Password   userName   Password  UserName  Password

   sys       abc123     sys        abc123 

The above yields the following:

>
Error
Connection to orcl.john.local as user sys failed.
>

The question is: SYS can connect as SYSDBA, how is it possible that it would not be able to connect as a "normal" user ?. I do not understand why that scenario fails.

Thank you for your help,

John.