The idea is to store credentials, login/pw in a "credential alias".
Then, those credential aliases can be used in :
-traditional aliases/connection
-in database aliases/connection
-hdfs aliases/connection
-API
-on user aliases for connected controllers/gallery
...etc.
The idea is that I only have to change the credentials once for all the connection type (on Hive, I have the in db alias, the traditional alias and even an HDFS alias using exactly the same credentials !! and I have to change all that manually).