Hi,

Are FoxPro data files encrypted? Can it be password protected? How is
the security in FoxPro compared to MS-Access?

-Sonia

Sonia,
There is no native encryption for VFP DBF's, but you got a number of options.

If you were encrypting the whole table, then one of the easiest and most
secure is Cryptor IV by Xitech (http://www.xitech-europe.co.uk/ ), but it is
a commercial product. They have a demo version to show how easy it is to
implement, and in my testing, there was very little overhead introduced on
all but the largest tables. I've used different versions in custom apps
under both FPW and VFP.

NetLib also has Encryptionizer (http://www.netlib.com), but I've never used
it.

One freeware solution to encryption is the CryptPak by Milan Kosina
(http://milan.jikos.cz/). Another is CIPHER50.FLL based on work by Tom
Rettig and available at the UT (http://www.universalthread.com/ ) in the
Download area.

VFP 7.0 & 8.0 have a Crypto API component in the Foundation Classes that uses the MS API encryption.

And of course, if you are only encrypting fields you can always "roll your
own" - high powered encryption schemes are severely crippled when you use
short data strings, so your algorithm will be just as "secure".

VFP 7.0 & 8.0 also provide database events that make it easy to check when files are opened, so you could implement a security scheme. However, if someone choses to use a non-VFP way to open the tables (e.g. a Hex File viewer), then this wouldn't be very effective.

If you really need data secuity, then you might want to consider using MSDE/SQL Server as your data store and use VFP as a frontend to access the data.

Rick

"sonia" <soniavdas (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote