Re: Transparent column encryption

On 11.02.23 22:54, Mark Dilger wrote:
> Thanks Peter. Here are some observations about the documentation in patch version 15.
>
> In acronyms.sgml, the CEK and CMK entries should link to documentation, perhaps linkend="glossary-column-encryption-key" and linkend="glossary-column-master-key". These glossary entries should in turn link to linkend="ddl-column-encryption".
>
> In ddl.sgml, the sentence "forcing encryption of certain parameters in the client library (see its documentation)" should link to linkend="libpq-connect-column-encryption".
>
> Did you intend the use of "transparent data encryption" (rather than "transparent column encryption") in datatype.sgml? If so, what's the difference?

There are all addressed in the v16 patch I just posted.

> Is this feature intended to be available from ecpg? If so, can we maybe include an example in 36.3.4. Prepared Statements showing how to pass the encrypted values securely. If not, can we include verbiage about that limitation, so folks don't waste time trying to figure out how to do it?

It should "just work". I will give this a try sometime, but I don't see
why it wouldn't work.

> The documentation for pg_dump (and pg_dumpall) now includes a --decrypt-encrypted-columns option, which I suppose requires cmklookup to first be configured, and for PGCMKLOOKUP to be exported. There isn't anything in the pg_dump docs about this, though, so maybe a link to section 5.5.3 with a warning about not running pg_dump this way on the database server itself?

Also addressed in v16.

> How does a psql user mark a parameter as having forced encryption? A libpq user can specify this in the paramFormats array, but I don't see any syntax for doing this from psql. None of the perl tap tests you've included appear to do this (except indirectly when calling test_client); grep'ing for the libpq error message "parameter with forced encryption is not to be encrypted" in the tests has no matches. Is it just not possible? I thought you'd mentioned some syntax for this when we spoke in person, but I don't see it now.

This has been asked about before. We just need to come up with a syntax
for it. The issue is contained inside psql.