Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

[Tom Mills]

I haven't posted here in months. I bought A5 V4.0 in Jan 2001. Was thinking about making an alternative version of an xbase product the vendor was killing. Found out you couldn't query on child tables whcih was a show stopper for me. But that you could in 5.0 which would be out in a "couple months".

About 6 months later, I got tired of waiting and started doing it in Access. And I'm making real progress.

But now that Ver 5.0 appears like it might really happen, I'm intrigued with the idea of trying it in A5. One argument against xbase is that there's no security. A5V5 solves that with the security and encryption.

But, I'd also like to use R&R Report Writer against those datafiles. Will there be some method for letting 3rd party tools use the encrypted files?

Tom Mills

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Tom,

I attended the recent developer's conference and the encryption feature was mentioned. It's my impression that the values in the table are scrambled, and stored that way, so that third party tools (like WordPerfect or Excel) can't open and use them meaningfully. If R&R needs to use the tables directly it's going to have the same trouble, I would imagine. And, I might add, this makes sense to me. If the data is encrypted I wouldn't want a stranger to be able to buy a copy of R&R and immediately be able to decrypt my files. -- tom

[Tom Mills]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

If you establish an ODBC connection to a SQL database, or an Access secured database, you can only open the database if you supply the correct login information.

That's what I'm thinking about here. Either the ability to launch a program through A5 and have A5 unencrypt the data, or have you application supply the login to A5.

If you can do that, you open up a world of third party applications.

That's a good thing!!

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Tom,

my impression is that the encryption feature physically alters the way in which the field values are stored in each record. I think you would need to copy or export the decrypted field values in order to use third party applications. This means creating temporary tables at report time, and should not be all that difficult.

-- tom

[Ray Fernandez]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Tom,

Alpha has nothing to do with it, at that point.

Go to www.codebase.com and post your question there. I understand were you are coming from. I do this with crystal reports all the time, against SQL2000 and need to login first.

Codebase must have a way for third-party applications to send the proper login credentials to unencrypt the data and retrieve information from it's tables.

Keep us posted.

Hope this Helps,
RF-ARS-Motorola

[Finian Lennon]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Tom:

To do what you do with Access and SQL would mean that Alpha would have to write an ODBC driver for A5 tables. Selwyn told me at the conference that they have no plans to do this.

Finian

[Ray Fernandez]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Hi Finian,

Is version 5 still using codebase?
If so, codebase should have ODBC drivers.

RF-ARS-Motorola

[Tom Mills]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

My intent may be unclear here. I was using Access and SQL as examples of how a 3rd party program can attach to a database and the database will require a login.

One of the arguments against xbase is that it is non-secure. So the abilty to encrypt the database is a good thing.

But....

If that means all 3rd party tools, can no longer access A5, that's a real drawback.

What I'm hoping for is the best of both worlds. An encrypted A5 so that any old dbf viewer can't open it, but the ability for 3rd party tools to read the data, as long as the correct login/password is supplied.

As a non-programmer (which is why I'm interested in A5) there's no way I can make this happen. I'm envisioning some kind of inteface between the 3rd part apps and the encrypted A5. It would probably take the form of a DSN which requires the Login/Password and then can unencrypt data as it goes to the 3rd party program. I assume some .dll does the actual work.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Tom, I'm curious. Does anyone else do what you are asking of Alpha Five? i.e. can Access or MS_SQL encrypt the tables, but expose them to R&R for direct access by that program?

-- tom

[whanigsberg]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

I have not investigated encryption in the V5 beta but what A5 encrypts it can decrypt so perhaps you could design a routine to decrypt the data to temp tables and start the report writer.

Bill

[Tom Mills]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

I think upon further investigation that Finian essentially answered my question. I was under the impression that an xbase connection wasn't ODBC but I guess it is. So I think my answer is No. Hopefully at some point the answer will change.

Tom Cone, I'm not sure. Since you can't get to Access data if you've set a password, I've never encrypted, which would be an additional step. I'll try it and let you know.

But encryption would be the only way of enforcing security outside of A5.

[martinwcole]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

another option is to use a non-alpha encryption tool - that way you could supply the "key" to any program

if you go to the code archive, one of the developers has such a tool - which works well

[Tom Mills]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

The answer to Tom Cones' Access question is Yes. I established an ODBC connection to Access from R&R. Then put a password on, and it made me login. Then I encrypted. And after the login the data was normal.

So the ODBC handles the login and the de-cryption.

Maybe at some point, A5 will make an ODBC driver. That would let people use Crystal, R&R, Word (directly, Excel), all without exports, yet still maintain security.

In the meantime, I'll peek at those scripts. Thanks for everyone's help.

[Ray Fernandez]

RE: Interface with R&R if A5 encrypted?

Hi Tom,

I was under the impression that the encryption was being done by the codebase engine, I was mistaken, it is being done by Alpha 5.

Will A5 give you the ability to send API or COM calls to the underlying encrypting mechanism???

Five years ago, we had a similar situation with paradox, one of the first local databases capable of encrypting tables. At that time we were using Report Smith for our reporting software.

In paradox, we created a READ ONLY USER for reporting purposes. Before we ran our report against our table, we would make an API call to the Borland Database Engine.

Example

1. SessionAddPassword, �TableName�,�UserName�,�Password�;
2. We would run the report
3. Then make a second API call
4. SessionRemovePassword, �TableName�,�UserName�,�Password�;

What you need here is a way to be able to pass information to the encrypting mechanism being used by A5. All this outside of A5, could be through API, COM, ADO, or even ODBC, but A5 must make this available to developers.

I know they have no intention of creating an ODBC driver, what about giving you the opportunity through API or Com?

I don't think A5 is reinventing the wheel, so thay might be using an encrypted mechanism already on the market that could be capable of accepting these calls.

Good Luck,
RF-ARS-Motorola