dbfhide [ options ] original-configuration-file encrypted-configuration-file

This utility does not accept the @data parameter to read in options from a configuration file.

Configuration files are used by some utilities to hold command line options. These options may contain a password. By default, dbfhide uses simple encryption on the specified file.

You cannot modify the contents of an encrypted file, and you cannot remove encryption from a file. To make changes to an encrypted file, you must replace the file. Therefore, it is recommended that you create copies of the configuration files and encrypt the copies. The original files should be saved in another location so that they can be used again to make copies. To replace encrypted configuration files, use the original files to create copies, make the changes to the copies, encrypt the copies, and then replace the old encrypted files with these new files.

If you specify the -w or -wm option, then the file is encrypted using an API supplied by Microsoft. The API keeps track of the encryption key that was used to encrypt the file. The encryption key is linked to the logged in user or computer.

• Configuration files and database server startup options
• Data security
• Configuration files
• Conditional parsing in configuration files
• Hiding the contents of .ini files
• Using simple encryption

Create a configuration file that starts the personal database server and the sample database. It should set a cache of 10 MB, and name this instance of the personal server Elora. The configuration file would be written as follows:

# Configuration file for server Elora
-n Elora
-c 10M
"%SQLANY12%\demo.db"

(Lines beginning with # are treated as comments.)

Name the file sample.txt. If you wanted to start the database using this configuration file, your command line would be:

dbeng12 @sample.txt

Now, add simple encryption to the configuration.

dbfhide sample.txt encrypted_sample.txt

Use the encrypted_sample.txt file to start a database.

dbsrv12 @encrypted_sample.txt