I wish encryption did work. Not to prevent against updates, because in most cases I think it's having an app built on stored procs that gives it extra value to the client - they CAN change it if needed, or tweak performance, but to give us the ability to protect intellectual property. I'll agree that real IP in a proc is rare, but maybe it's rarer than it should be because we don't have the encryption. Same for DTS/SSIS.

I get the pain it causes from the DBA side, but as someone who has built a thing or two, it would be nice to be able to secure a few key ideas. More often the IP gets loaded on the app side of things, and as you point out it's hard even there to keep secrets.

It's not on my top 10 list of things I wish worked better, but there are people who legitimately need to protect IP and I wish we had a way to give it to them.