Ron Weiner <NoOne (AT) NoWare (DOT) NutThing> wrote in
news:ipakc1$tq0$1 (AT) dont-email (DOT) me:

But really, the question here comes down to how much work you're
willing to do to get to the point that you can say what you've just
said above.

From my point of view, the bar is not very high. If someone really
wants to steal my work, they'll manage to do so -- nothing I can do
to stop them -- so I don't spend a lot of effort convoluting my work
in order to ineffectively prevent this. And I'd definitely say
there's an 80/20 rule involved here, in that the easiest methods of
obfuscation (like Access's built-in encryption) get you 80% for
virtually no work, while getting the remainder requires a huge
amount of planning and effort.

To me, it's not worth it.

Others may come down with a different balance point for that, as you
have, but everybody is making exactly the same calculation -- using
imperfect means to try to secure something that can't be made
completely safe under any circumstances.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
contact via website only http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

"David-W-Fenton" <NoEmail (AT) SeeSignature (DOT) invalid> wrote

Yes, my measure for protecting queries, forms, reports, and code (macros
don't enter into it, because I just don't use 'em) is 'virtually' no time
nor effort. As I've said before, most of the colleagues whose knowledge I
respect could re-create your application in very little more time than it'd
take an experienced hacker to skirt even minimal security measures and steal
it.

Maybe if it had been a little more difficult to break Access security, I'd
have considered some projects to sell to a wider audience than the "bespoke"
systems I've worked on. But, it wasn't, and I didn't, and I don't think I
have suffered greatly for the lack of a general-use thingamabob in my bag of
tricks. Anyway, for the life of me, I have never been able to conjure up a
vision of "the next big-smash software breakthrough" like the spreadsheet or
the database.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP