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  1. #1
    stevepcne is offline Novice
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    Question what must i do to sell my database ( protection )?


    Hi everyone, I would like to sell my database. My questions are these:I suppose that I must encrypt the database first?, but would that prevent a person I sold it to from reselling it? or is there more to it? thanks in advance...

  2. #2
    pdebaets is offline Competent Performer
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    Encrypting would not prevent the database from being copied and/or resold. It is useful if you have sensitive information in your database, but you should probably go with SQL Server if that is the case.

    If you want to prevent someone from reselling your database you may want to consider copy protection. We have a product that will do this at our site. There used to be a similar product from SageKey, but they discontinued support of it, so ours is the only product I know of that will do this for Access.

    Have you used the Package Solution Wizard? Here's more info if you have Access 2007: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ffice.12).aspx

  3. #3
    ajetrumpet is offline VIP
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    Quote Originally Posted by pdebaets View Post
    If you want to prevent someone from reselling your database you may want to consider copy protection.
    Can this prevent reverse engineering too? What would that do for this person if they simply sent an MDE or ACCDE file to the user?

  4. #4
    pdebaets is offline Competent Performer
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    An MDE or ACCDE file will not allow access to the design of forms and reports, nor will it allow access to any VBA code. You can also hide your database objects. Some say that there's a way in to MDE and ACCDE files, but I don't have any information on that. You can also encrypt your database back-end. That's about the best Access can do to prevent reverse engineering.

  5. #5
    ajetrumpet is offline VIP
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    Quote Originally Posted by pdebaets View Post
    An MDE or ACCDE file will not allow access to the design of forms and reports, nor will it allow access to any VBA code. You can also hide your database objects. Some say that there's a way in to MDE and ACCDE files, but I don't have any information on that. You can also encrypt your database back-end. That's about the best Access can do to prevent reverse engineering.
    Exactly. The bottom line, I believe, is that Access is not secure because it's not complex. As for being able to get into MDE and/or ACCDE files - of course there's a way. But I think the key to getting into those files and viewing the compilation structure of it is more or less about finding the tools to do it with. If you don't have the tools, it's probably impossible.

    Like most reverse engineering techniques, the tools are out there but they're probably available only via underground-world like connections. It's not legitimate behavior to do that sort of stuff anyway so obviously no reasonable company would be selling these kind of tools.

  6. #6
    stevepcne is offline Novice
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    Is it possible to add an administrator type password to be able to copy or send the database? or make it read only if moved or copied from a customers computer?

  7. #7
    pdebaets is offline Competent Performer
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    It is possible to do both of these things if you can uniquely identify the computer that your software was originally installed on, then have code that recognizes that the database is running on a different computer. That's what our KeyedAccess software does. It turns out that there are unique hardware ID numbers on each computer that can be found and used for this purpose. You could find, for instance, the motherboard NIC MAC Address and save it to a table, and compare the table value to the motherboard value each time the app starts up. If there's no match, then the app is running on another computer, and you could prompt for a password, or set it to read only mode.

  8. #8
    mercapto is offline Advanced Beginner
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    Hi, everyone. I'll place my post in this thread.
    I am thinking about selling my database as well and I have several questions about it. I am not a professional programmer but I think I've got a singular product.

    1. I know I can create an mde file that does not need Office, but this file must need a runtime enviroment, right? My question is if I can distribute this runtime files with my db and If it's free.

    2. I really don't like this option, I'd rather make an exe with VisualBasic. Can I open my database with VB (or similar) and use all the forms, reports... to create a single exe program. Is there any program that can make this? I heard about visual fox pro...

    3. What is exactly what professionals of Access programing do? Which are the steps? Because I believe that an mdb is not a "product".

    Thx. Sorry for my bad English.

Please reply to this thread with any new information or opinions.

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