From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com>
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
Cc: Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
Cc: Trevor Talbot <quension@gmail.com>
Cc: Roberts, Jon <Jon.Roberts@asurion.com>
Cc: Kris Jurka <books@ejurka.com>
Cc: Jonah H. Harris <jonah.harris@gmail.com>
Cc: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: viewing source code
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:01:58 -0500
Message-ID: <20377.1198191718@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b42b73150712201235k7f41c4c7k92321af29ec768e5@mail.gmail.com>
References: <1A6E6D554222284AB25ABE3229A92762112A33@nrtexcus702.int.asurion.com>
<476A9ADF.5030101@commandprompt.com>
<90bce5730712201047m4dd0fe05k6b1fccc57897326f@mail.gmail.com>
<20071220114011.64a650d7@commandprompt.com>
<20071220200739.GC11586@alvh.no-ip.org>
<b42b73150712201235k7f41c4c7k92321af29ec768e5@mail.gmail.com>
"Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
> I don't really agree that wrapping pl/pgsql with encryptor/decryptor
> is a bad idea.
It's quite a good idea, because it has more than zero chance of
succeeding politically in the community.
The fundamental reason why preventing access to pg_proc.prosrc won't
happen is this: all the pain (and there will be plenty) will be
inflicted on people who get none of the benefit (because they don't give
a damn about hiding their own functions' code). The folks who want
function hiding can shout all they want, but as long as there is a very
sizable fraction of the community who flat out *don't* want it, it's
not going to get applied.
Encrypted function bodies avoid this problem because they inflict no
performance penalty, operational complexity, or client-code breakage
on people who don't use the feature. They are arguably also a better
solution because they can guard against more sorts of threats than
a column-hiding solution can.
I don't deny that the key-management problem is interesting, but it
seems soluble; moreover, the difficulties that people have pointed to
are nothing but an attempt to move the goalposts, because they
correspond to requirements that a column-hiding solution would never
meet at all.
So if you want something other than endless arguments to happen,
come up with a nice key-management design for encrypted function
bodies.
regards, tom lane
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Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, mmoncure@gmail.com, alvherre@commandprompt.com, jd@commandprompt.com, quension@gmail.com, Jon.Roberts@asurion.com, books@ejurka.com, jonah.harris@gmail.com, wmoran@collaborativefusion.com
Subject: Re: viewing source code
In-Reply-To: <20377.1198191718@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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