Hi guys,

In my painful transition to .NET from MS Access I once again find myself looking at another tool that I seem to need in this never ending tool list to make a viable commercial product in .NET.

In reading the daily posts and just about any post to ease my painful learning curve I was confounded to find out that .NET assemblies are easily reversed engineered and thus the need for an Obfuscating tool.

While further researching and reading bewildered as to the fact that an obfuscator is needed and that this alone does not stop reverse engineering I found out about a couple of tools that seem to achieve true protection against reverse engineering and wanted to know if anyone has used “Thinstall’s Virtualization Suite” or “Remotesoft’s Salamander .Net Protector”?

I think that SF developers use Dotfuscator so you guys may have more info on these alternatives and why you guys don’t seem to use them…

Not to sound like a sales pitch for this product but I’m impressed with “Thinstall’s Virtualization Suite” since it seems to be the perfect tool for several reasons beyond an alternative to an obfuscating tool and really protecting against reverse engineering. For one it also seems to resolves the need for a deployment tool thus eliminating an installation process and all the issues this brings like admin and restricted install issues to deal with (good for the client and me) and also eliminates the need to install the .Net framework on the client and the issues this entails since its all in the resulting executable thus easing the deployment issue, no need to create a licensing scheme since it has its own licensing API, runs on its own protected sanbox so it protects the client even further from potential blowouts (as a .Net newbie this is very possible), and also has a licensing manager to help you track your licenses. So besides the cost (which is relative) can anyone tell me if this tool sounds like a fallacy or is this tool really worth it’s seemingly weight in gold?

Thanks in advance for any info on these products…

JC