Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

18.1. Security for the ACCDB File Format

One of the new features of Microsoft Office Access 2007 is a file format: ACCDB. The security features available for it are somewhat different than those provided for the MDB file formats in a number of ways. This section discusses the security available for ACCDB files.

The five different forms of database security for the ACCDB file format are as follows:

• Shared-Level Security: There is one simple form of shared-level security provided by the Access Connectivity Engine for ACCDB: Encrypt Database with Password. Access 2007 uses a password in combination with the RC4 encryption standard to encrypt the contents of a database file. When this security is enabled, the user is required to enter the password before he can open the database and read the contents. In addition, the data in the database is encrypted so that opening a file with a text editor does not reveal the raw data contained in the database. This type of security works well in small workgroups where it isn't necessary to know who opened the database or to restrict users from altering any objects in the database. This feature is new to Access; it replaces both database passwords and database encoding, effectively combining them into one package.

• Compiled Database Code: Compiling the VBA code project for the database application produces an Access Compiled Database (ACCDE) file. When a database is compiled, the code is compiled to a binary format, removing the readable code from ...