Rad & Dot Net - Digital Warrior

Assorted ramblings (and vents!!) from a techie on the sunny shores of Kenya, East Africa

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

New Releases

RSS Bandit 1.3.0.26, one of the finest (and cheapest :) RSS reader is out. Next best thing to FeedDemon

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Encrypting SQL Server Data

There's an upcoming project for which for security reasons I wish to encrypt every last row and column in the DB

Options
- Stored procedure that encrypts the data as it is being encrypted for storage
- Second stored procedure that encrypts the data as it is being decrypted for viewing
- Function(s) that does the actual encryption and decryption.

Rationale
- The sa account must be emasculated
- Too may smartasses like peeking directly into the database
- Very sensitive data beign stored that can be identified by other attributes e.g. money (The app is financial)

Caveats
- I shall NOT, repeat, NOT write any DLLs in C++ and then register them with SQL. I am not a fan of C++
- How do I mangle fields like ints and money???!!

Workarounds
- Tinker with my SQL Express Beta, memory hog as it is by wrtiting said logic in C# and System.Cryptography

Hmmm. Need to ruminate a bit more

Stored Procedures

I come to find that i am pushing more and more of my logic into the database.

Pros
- Much simpler coding
- Fewer database hits
- Great logic for handling related updates e.g. when adding an order item, creating an order first
- CURSORS! (Yes, there are times when a cursor is a GOOD thing!)

Cons
- Portability out the window (but then again, database choice is a decision not made lightly!)
- Aah -- can't quite think of another!