"Sharing" Passwords

["McMinn, Dean" <dmcminn () EWU EDU>]

We have a major initiative here to go through and change ALL passwords for system and "service" accounts.

Now (and maybe I'm being a bit too anal about this) but, between BANNER and ORACLE accounts, this accounts for about 80 
accounts PER DATABASE...so a couple thoughts come to mind that I would like to get some input on.

1.  What are thoughts/practices on having all service accounts within a database having the same password (example: 
saturn, faismgr, baninst1, fimsmgr, etc)?

2. What are thoughts/practices on having the password "shared" across databases (ex: saturn has the same password 
across all banner instances)?

Obviously, I want to do things as securely as possible, but don't want to managed 400+ passwords if I don't have to.

Thanks,
Dean McMinn
Eastern Washington University