Re: Wrap (obfuscate) code

On 7/4/06, Aaron Bono <postgresql(at)aranya(dot)com> wrote:
> I don't see how PostgreSQL being open source will stop obfuscation of the
> PL/pgSQL from being possible.

You're missing the whole point. Oracle doesn't obfuscate the code,
they compile it into bytecode and then spit the bytecode back out as a
textual "wrapped" version... this wouldn't work for an open source
database because all you'd have to do is modify the PL/pgSQL engine to
act as a code generator so that upon execution, it would nicely
generate source code to the function. In short, childs play.

In fact, the Oracle wrap utility doesn't totally prevent you from
reverse engineering a procedure, function, or package... it just makes
it *very* difficult. I had to do this for a company that paid a
developer to write some code for them and the consultant only gave
them the wrapped version (refusing to give them the actual source
code). I had to reverse engineer his algorithm with nothing but
wrapped code.

Just remember, if you had the source code to Oracle, the wrap utility
would be pretty much worthless as you could easily do the same thing
as PL/pgSQL and PostgreSQL.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1300
EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301
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