What if TDE was available in Standard Edition?

  • jay holovacs (7/7/2010)


    TravisDBA (7/6/2010)


    Thanks, but I already know about backing up a encrypted database with compression has no effect on the compression, and that is in BOL, hence my first post. However, it was pointed out in a previous post by Jay that compressing the database first then encrypting as an alternative. Where is that in BOL?, Anyway, I still don't like the idea of Mickeysoft giving us two new neat features we basically can't use together. 🙂

    My comment was not based on BOL, it was based the on the mathematics of compression and encryption. Compression works on mapping repetitive patterns in data, once encyrpted almost all such patterns are lost

    Which is why all normal encryption software that's built for this first compresses (which, as a desirable side effect, reduces repetitive patterns in the data), and then encrypts! See PGP and GPG software, or any of the compression+encryption softare (7-Zip, PKWare Zip, WinZip, etc.) which use this ordering.

    If your DB is encrypted but not compressed, then clearly one should have the option to spend the CPU time to decrypt, then compress, and then encrypt the compressed data, thus giving the effects of both. Since SQL Server compression doesn't take a whole lot of CPU anyway, this shouldn't be an unusual option to consider.

  • Has anyone implemented table compression in conjunction with TDE?

    What was the impact of compression and TDE on database size, compared to a database with just TDE or just table compression?

    It would be nice if there was a separate option on the backup command to encrypt the backup file, with or without compression. That would be a more useful option for most customers than TDE.

  • Nadrek (7/7/2010)


    jay holovacs (7/7/2010)


    TravisDBA (7/6/2010)


    Thanks, but I already know about backing up a encrypted database with compression has no effect on the compression, and that is in BOL, hence my first post. However, it was pointed out in a previous post by Jay that compressing the database first then encrypting as an alternative. Where is that in BOL?, Anyway, I still don't like the idea of Mickeysoft giving us two new neat features we basically can't use together. 🙂

    My comment was not based on BOL, it was based the on the mathematics of compression and encryption. Compression works on mapping repetitive patterns in data, once encyrpted almost all such patterns are lost

    Which is why all normal encryption software that's built for this first compresses (which, as a desirable side effect, reduces repetitive patterns in the data), and then encrypts! See PGP and GPG software, or any of the compression+encryption softare (7-Zip, PKWare Zip, WinZip, etc.) which use this ordering.

    If your DB is encrypted but not compressed, then clearly one should have the option to spend the CPU time to decrypt, then compress, and then encrypt the compressed data, thus giving the effects of both. Since SQL Server compression doesn't take a whole lot of CPU anyway, this shouldn't be an unusual option to consider.

    Exactly right Michael! My point is that Mickeysoft did not take time in the first place to consider this as others already do. If they had, then those two new features would have been able to be utilized together in the product, rather than separately. 🙂

    "Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"

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