Isn't part of the problem really a single point of failure? If the database certificate becomes corrupted or lost you are SOL.

Can the live database be encrypted using one certificate...

Sorry, I just realized that user defined functions can't make any changes to data, so insert, update and delete statements can't be called from within a function.

Another approach would be to use functions instead of a procedure in the trigger. For example:

create table Books (

BookCode varchar(5),

BookDesc varchar(100))

go

-- The function processes a new BookCode during insertion

create function...

You might want to check the various Set options on your production and dev boxes. Thinks like ArithAbort and NoCount.

Ambition, hmmm... don't you think this is a better description of Ambition?

http://despair.com/ambition.html

I don't think Mark's query returns the password if the TEST02 user actually exists. Perhaps this will work.

select top 1 password as Result

from (

select 1 as SortOrder, last, password

from [dbo].

where...

I find it interesting how many replies have "simple" solutions that totally rely on technology (VPN, remove hard drives, terminal services, etc). All of these solutions will fail precisely for...