Next Edward Stangler post in the missing catpatch.sql series
Then Edward gets onto the issue for this post, that fact that if you have upgraded to 9i then you can no longer connect as sysdba whilst specifying a TNS alias in the connect string. The issue is the subject of his post, a missing password file. Ed covers AS SYSDBA, password files, orapwd and how remote privileged connections work very well. This is a great short article and again it’s available here.