hi, i am trying let my users change/edit their password through the application
without using the pcc without any success.
can any person out there be of help.
i tried calling the sp below from the application without success, i figured that the problem is with the variable :setnewpassword which is supposed to hold the password.

CREATE PROCEDURE editpassword(in:setnewpassword varchar(8));

begin
set password = :setnewpassword;
end

this is what the syntax says;
SET PASSWORD = password

password ::= user-defined-name

Why create a procedure for something as simple as setting the password?
Instead of calling the SP with the new password, just call the SET PASSWORD statement directly. There's no advantage to creating and calling a procedure that does one statement.

If calling it directly doesn't work, post the exact error, exact version of PSQL and how the user was created.

ok thanks, but when i post it directly from my clarion front end;
usersetup{PROPQL} = 'SET PASSWORD = mypass'
there is no error posted but instead of using the contents of the variable -mypass- e.g 'tinycat' entered by the user to change the password, the variable name -mypass- is rather used to change the password.

That's a Clarion issue, not PSQL issue.
It seems that Clarion isn't replacing the variable name with the contents. I'm not familiar with Clarion, but in VB it would be something like:
mypass = "tinycat"
sSQL = "SET PASSWORD = " & mypass
which would give a statement like the following to the engine:
SET PASSWORD = tinycat