I would like to be able to perform application-level encryption in ASP.NET, producing an array of bytes that would then be saved to a MySQL blob column. I would then like it to be an option that, if you have the encryption key, you would be able to decrypt it using MySQL's AES_DECRYPT() function. This seems like it should be possible, since AES_DECRYPT is an implementation of AES/Rijndael.
The MySQL AES_ENCRYPT/DECRYPT functions simply take a key and the string to encrypt/decrypt as parameters. The examples i've seen for encryption in ASP.NET/C#, however, involve also specifying values for Key and IV (initialization vector). How do these affect the final, encrypted byte array, and how can they be taken into account when decrypting with AES_DECRYPT)_?
You can do that by setting RijndaelManaged to use ECB mode.
However, ECB mode is not secure and should be avoided.
In general, a database is a very bad place to perform encryption.
If you are able to encrypt your data in the database, that implies that you have both the ciphertext and the key in the same place; this defeats the purpose of encryption.
You should keep the key as far away from ciphertext storage as possible; using any sort of SQL encryption function is usually indicative of a fundamental design flaw in your encryption strategy which can have disastrous consequences.