I am in 100% agreement. The sql documentation on encryption had my brain hurting. But I must add that SQL books online is an excellant tool. Mike, your suggestions were refreshing and easy to understand. I have also been writing sql for almost 12 years, starting with 6.5. The importance of security today is too import to pass on. My job is to pass data back and forth to sql from web pages and other applications. I'm not a DBA but as Mike will probably agree, you can't program around SQL for long without much of the knowledge. Thanks Mike