One of my customers asks me for encrypting the content of the database at the application level :

> insert into mytable (name) values ('Roger')
becomes transparently
> insert into mytable (name) values ('Xc6

Use a custom UserType

In fact, I'd like not to touch to my code. I would hope a transparent encryption layer solution ....

As Michael said, a custom UserType is perfect for what you want to achieve.

This keeps your business code happily working with the unencrypted data, but as soon as it gets persisted it gets encrypted. On reading it will be decrypted for you.

Check out the patterns pages http://www.hibernate.org/40.html for more information on creating UserTypes.

I have a similar need in my application. I'd already planned to use a UserType, but can anyone recommend a good encryption library for stuff like this? (Sorry, not really a Hibernate question.)

Hum, I don't understand very well the process. Do you mean I have to change every standard hibernate type to specific UserType types to handle the encryption/decryption process ?

You could look it up in the reference documentation.

Ok, what I have understood is to replace in my mapping file the regular hibernate types with mine implementing UserType :
- EncryptedStringType
- EncryptedIntegerType
....
Was it what you thought about ?

Of course.

http://java.sun.com/products/jce/index-14.html

Paul :-)

Ok, so it's not so transparent, I have to recode even it's not so tedious.
For thoses interested, I've found this solution that is really a transparent encryption layer : http://www.safelogic.com/en_api_jdbc_en ... e_sql.html
Richard