I'm on a roll today.
This is a question that I have been meaning to ask for a long time now but never got around to it until now:
Has anybody tried to use the Encrypt() and Decrypt() FWH Functions to stop prying eyes looking at a clients data?
I would imagine that to a hacker cracking this encryption would be easy but it would certainly make it a lot more difficult for your average user who is able to open a database file with dBASE / Clipper's DBU.EXE or use DOS TYPE or EDIT.EXE to view or print the data.
This is a feature of BTrieve / Pervasive SQL i.e. if you do not know the actual file structure of a file it is pretty difficult to reconstruct the data and even with that information there are very few utilities out there (that actually work) that will enable you to actually view the data in a readable form. Using BTrieve / Pervasive SQL is a route that I will never follow again however (it is extremly cumbersome and slow in my opinion). Unforuanately the file structure of a dBASE (FWH) database is pretty much easy to see so there is no protection there. The only thing that you can do is try to encrypt the data.
So far the only (potential) problems I can see would be with FoxPro Indexes etc. etc.
Any thoughts on this?
Regards,
Dale.