{ character (open curly bracket) causes failed login attempts

It seems like SQL Server's DSN/login/connection methods choke if a user's SQL
Logon password begins with an "open curly bracket character" ( { ).

Although it correctly and accurately sets the SQL password to the specified
value (as verified using the undocumented sp_pwdcompare() SQL function),
attempts to login the SQL server fail when using this password. This has
been tested by attempting to connect using an Inhouse application , MS Query
Analyzer and MS Enterprise Manager. It seems this is related to how the
connection string is being built.

I checked, but could not locate any Microsoft (or other) documentation on
this finding. Has anyone else ever encountered this? I considered a "patch"
to sp_password() to fail if the leading character is a '{', but there's got
to be some better solution.


To Reproduce
----------------

1) Open Query Analyzer (QA), connected as 'sa'
2) Change a valid user's password to '{test' (I used the login ID 'allen'
on one of our servers)
e.g. sp_password NULL, '{test', 'allen'
3) Connect to the server using Query Analyzer and that login ID and password

You will get an error:

Unable to connect to server <servername>:
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Neither DSN nor SERVER keyword supplied

.

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