<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  4. How to use Anatella? > 4.6. Working with Anatella-Graphs > 4.6.3. Security – User management system – Graph Encryption > 4.6.3.1. Why encrypt .anatella graphs?

 

There are several reasons to encrypt .anatella graphs:

 

1.Let’s assume that you are an independent consulting company that is selling a very expensive “Business-Intelligence” solution. Typically, this solution extracts some data from your customer data warehouse, transform it and give some precious & valuable results to your customers. Let’s now assume that you developed your solution using SQL scripts to do all the data transformations.

 

In such a case, it’s very easy to illegally make a copy of your solution: A thief only needs to look inside the log file of the database and copy/paste all the SQL scripts that were executed. Basically, anybody with a little bit of experience in database technology can steal your work (i.e. steal the SQL scripts that are composing your solution).

 

In opposition, if you are using (encrypted) .anatella graphs to make all the required data transformations, your customers can only run your solution, but nobody can copy it. More precisely: you can copy the .anatella files but it will be practically impossible to “sell them” because you can’t open the .anatella graph to:
 

•change the name of the ODBC connections, change the input/output files, etc.

 

•understand how it’s working.

 

To summarize: Anatella encryption allows you to protect your IP (“Intellectual Property”).

 
 

2.The possibility to set different expiration dates for different users offers new Business opportunities for consulting companies. Consider the following scenario:
 

•You developed a proof-of-concept (POC) for a client on the servers from the client (it’s easy because you don’t need any administrative privileges to run the portable version of Anatella).
 

•After the POC, the client hesitates to buy your solution. In the meantime, your solution is still installed on their computer. Without using encrypted .anatella files, anybody (e.g. people from another consulting company) can “have a look” and steal your ideas.
 

•The client finally decides to use (and buy!) your solution for one month (in the hope to be able to use it for a longer time, once everything is setup and running). When the contract expires, all the Anatella processes should stop working. To do that with Anatella, you can define a specific user (i.e. with a specific login/password) with a specific expiration date. Then, the client receives only the login/password of the time-limited user. You can even consider renting your Anatella-based solution: all you need to do is to define several users with different expiration dates.

 
 

3.In large companies, it’s important to be able to prevent the new trainees to modify critical business processes. For additional security, such processes could be encrypted .anatella files. Only the people with the sufficient credits (i.e. knowing the login/password) can edit & change the .anatella graphs.