Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 02/17/07 20:12

Sandeep Madduri's group (sandeepmadduri@gmail.com) writes:
> I would not like my customers to have access to any SQL code that is
> being packaged with our product and hence would like to encrypt it in
> some fashion. What's your recommendation on packaging/deploying .sql
> files?

First of all, keep in mind that while you can create a stored procedure
WITH ENCRYPTION, it is not real encryption, but merely obfustication.
Any users who is dead set will be able to recover the original code.
(Can easily be found on Google.) That is not to say that WITH ENCRYPTION
is useless. It does act like a sign saying "NO TRESPASSING" and will
keep honest people out. But you still need a license agreement.

As for the setup, you could ship the files in some obfusticated
fashion, and then have a program that knows how to "decrypt" the files
and then pass them to SQL Server unecrypted.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

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