>>.... running on a remote system is the only user with access privileges to the table....
>
>Like I said, a nice little idea for a small little utility that needs to have a secure file, but forget it. Its "immensely dumb" and will obviously never work in any scenario.

Mike, obviously it won't work at least whenever the file is opened for use, and it requires explicit activity to corrupt and uncorrupt using low-level file I/O, which will require exclusive access for low-level reading and writing, so you're never sure when you can secure and unsecure the file. Cryptor is a far better solution here; the data encryption/decryption is handled programmatically, so that you can truly limit access to your application environment. The file reamins secured to others when your app has opened the file; each app is responsible for encryption and decryption of data. If the data is copied off (the biggest danger for data that's supposed to be secured) it's still unusable.

If user-level access control is acceptable, simply locate the file on a Win2K system with an NTFS partition, and enable Win2K's EFS; the OS limits access to authorized users, and file-copying to another removable media device can be thwarted. A backend is by far a better solution, in that the backend engine can enforce access control with finer granularity than the file level, and can completely prevent copying or accessing viia other apps, even by users with permissions on the file.