OBIEE 12c Analytics Login Authenitcation Failure - NQODBC nQSError: 10018 [SOLVED]

This is one of the issues that took up a lot of time of ours.

Issue: OBIEE throws the following error when trying to login to analytics using weblogic username and password.

[OBIPS] [NOTIFICATION:1] [] [saw.securitysubsystem.checkauthentication.runimpl] [ecid: 667216e2-5177-4c25-86d2-b97ad8d56fa7-000002b2,0:1:1] [tid: 1830131456] [SI-Name: ] [IDD-Name: ] [IDD-GUID: ] [userId: ] Authentication Failure.

Odbc driver returned an error (SQLDriverConnectW).

State: 08004.  Code: 10018.  [NQODBC] [SQL_STATE: 08004] [nQSError: 10018] Access for the requested connection is refused.

 (08004)

State: HY000.  Code: 43113.  [nQSError: 43113] Message returned from OBIS.

 (HY000)

State: HY000.  Code: 43126.  [nQSError: 43126] Authentication failed: invalid user/password. (HY000)[[

File:checkauthentication.cpp

Line:1534

Location:

saw.securitysubsystem.checkauthentication.runimpl

saw.threadpool.asynclogon

saw.threads

]]

Cause: We spent a lot of time trying to find the root cause of the issue. We checked metadata schemas, boot.properties, multiple restarts, created new users and many others. The actual cause was that we have two LDAP's defined, one default weblogic LDAP and the other client LDAP server. 

The problem was that the Client LDAP server was throwing a connection error while trying to connect. The LDAP server administrator credentials were changed.  

The authentication process first checks credentials against client LDAP. Which refused the connection and hence the error,

Code: 10018. [NQODBC] [SQL_STATE: 08004] [nQSError: 10018] Access for the requested connection is refused.

Resolution: Update the Client LDAP providers with the latest credentials and then restart the server. 

Another work around is to change the client LDAP provider control flag to optional.