>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>My application has a password table (straight forward, user name/id, password, email, etc.) which I currently encrypt with my own (written in VFP) very simple code. As I move the application more towards .net environment and the same database has to be accessed from .net side. So I would like to convert my own encryption into something that is built into SQL Server so that both VFP app and .NET app can use it transparently. Is there a feature in SQL Server that would allow me to "move" the encryption to the SQL server and have both VFP and .NET use it?
>>>TIA.
>>
>>Are you encrypting or hashing? For passwords it may be better to just keep hash and SQL Server has HashBytes function for this. It does, of course, has encryption as well.
>
>I am embarrassed to admit that I don't know the difference between encrypting or hashing. My application does not have any sensitive or financial information. So a very basic (the simpler the better) way to protect the records in the password file from being visible to anybody is what I am looking for.

I was confusing the two for long time myself. Hashing means you never retrieve the original value of password and just store something. You then compare hash value of the password with the stored string. Two different passwords can potentially generate the same hash value.

For encryption you store encrypted value and you can get back the original value if you know the encryption key.