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Certificates
A certificate is a database-level securable that follows the X.509 standard and supports X.509 V1 fields. You can load a certificate from a file or an assembly, or generate a key pair and create a self-signed certificate.
Private keys generated by SQL Server are 1024 bits long. Private keys imported from an external source have a minimum length of 384 bits and a maximum length of 3,456 bits. The length of an imported private key must be an integer multiple of 64 bits.
The private key must correspond to the public key specified by certificate. When you create a certificate from a container, loading the private key is optional. But when SQL Server generates a self-signed certificate, the private key is always created. By default, the private key is encrypted with the help of the database master key. If the database master key does not exist and no password is specified, the action will fail.
Note: The object is available only for Microsoft SQL server 2005.
New certificates are created within Create Certificate Wizard. In order to run the wizard you should either
or
or
To create a new certificate with the same properties as one of the existing certificates has:
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Certificates can be edited within Certificate Editor. In order to run the editor you should either
or
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To drop a certificate:
or
and confirm dropping in the dialog window.
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