The desired functionality includes: (1) storing encrypted data, (2) issuing encrypted queries and getting back encrypted results. Our goal is to support all sophisticated features of a DBMS such as complex queries, indexes, transactions and stored procedures while maintaining strong security, (3) enabling automated migration of database applications to the cloud.

The problem is challenging because encryption masks the data whereas query processing needs to “look inside” the data. We address the above challenge in two ways.

1. We modify SQL Server to incorporate trusted hardware. Trusted hardware devices are already widely used for security, for example, smart cards for secure authentication and secure co-processors in ATMs. Our goal is to deploy reconfigurable trusted hardware for data processing and efficiently integrate it with the SQL Server engine.

2. In the classic client-server architecture, we push as much computation as allowed by the data encryption to the server. The remainder is evaluated in the client. Our goal is build tools is to automate this partitioning for database applications. 

Overall, our project studies the following broad issues: (1) security and efficiency of processing encrypted data (2) designing trusted hardware using programmable hardware and (3) leveraging static analysis techniques to automate migration of database applications.