As far as I know there is no viable solution for this problem. If you
want to protect your data, dont give it to customers. If one program
can read data, then other programs can do it too.
One way to protect your data is to set up a website and let the
customers do their lookups there. This also makes very easy to
update your data. Even then, it is relatively easy for a determined
person to build a program, that grabs data through your web-
inteface.

Andres Allkivi

Mike Cardenas wrote:

> I have been reading the line on encryption, and cannot believe that it is
> thought to be unnecessary. We have a parts cross reference database and the
> interface to access it that we supply to customers. It allows our customers
> to enter competitors part numbers and find our corresponding number. We
> have spent over 2 years and a few thousand man hours compiling this data.
> We do not want people to be able to use notepad or some other third party
> software to easily STEAL this data. I was planning on moving the whole
> thing to IB6 since it would fit our needs almost perfectly, but without a
> method to protect the data, I do not think that this will be possible.
> Someone please come up with a viable solution.