I'm trying to wrap my head around the inner mechanics of how Microsoft EFS works on SQL Server.
I have read Microsoft's TechNet post on EFS (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb457116.aspx) and I can imagine what's going on with a regular file that needs to be decrypted, opened, loaded into RAM (or a tempfile?), worked on, saved, and encrypted again. But how would things go with a SQL Server database that is really large, needs to be open all the time, and is constantly changing?
Is this the order of internal operation for ongoing usage of an EFS SQL database:
- SQL Server starts up and pulls the SQL database file
- It's encrypted so the EFS service decrypts it
- The ENTIRE decrypted SQL database exists in the operating system's RAM
- A user searches for some text on the database. This search happens quickly because everything is already...