6.4 Encrypting XFD Files

Under certain circumstances, you may want to encrypt your XFD files so that users do not have direct access to them. Such circumstances might include the following:

• You've hidden some fields with the HIDDEN directive.

• You've made some fields read only with the READ-ONLY directive.

• You don't want your users to see certain file formats.

You can use the xfdcrypt utility, which is included with AcuODBC, to encrypt your XFD files. Otherwise, users can remove these directives to gain access to privileged fields.

To encrypt an XFD, enter the following at the DOS prompt:

xfdcrypt infile.xfd

The xdfdcrypt utility encrypts the file and places it in the XFD directory, along with the XFD.

You can encrypt multiple files at once by including more than one file name on the command line or by using DOS-style pattern matching. For example:

xfdcrypt infile1.xfd infile2.xfd infile3.xfd

or

xfdcrypt infile?.xfd

Distribute only files with the ".efd" extension to your end users (or XFDs that were not encrypted in the first place). Users cannot modify ".efd" files, so your hidden data remains hidden. If you need to view or modify the EFDs or XFDs, you can access the original ".xfd" files on the development machine. The xfdcrypt utility can decrypt .efd files into readable ".xfd" files. Therefore, you should not include xfdcrypt.exe with your AcuODBC application.