Informix Encryption Questions

Dear All, I would like to get the information on the following two questions which are related to the usage of Encryption in Informix (IDS 11.50 FC4) How Informix provides key management? ===================================== While using decrypt_char function, we need to provide encryption key or alternatively we need to set encryption key at session level using set encryption password command. In both of these approaches we need to provide encryption key in clear, but due to security reasons we do not want to use encryption key in clear. Is there any secure way of providing encryption key? (may be encryption key is also encrypted?) Data encryption Impact on performance ===================================== What is the impact of enabling data encryption on performance in terms of percentage? e.g: 1- impact of decryption when selecting 1 to 50 encrypted columns (encrypted column is not in where clause) 2- impact of encryption when updating/inserting 1 to 50 encrypted columns (encrypted column is not in where clause) I will be waiting for your response. Thanks. Regards, Omer Saeed Khan