Phil Factor (2/1/2009)
Yeah. spMakeWebTask. I love using this for dishing out excel-based reports via email. I still use it, but with a delegation process for doing daily reports (I'm too idle to use Service Broker) It now, sadly has a sentence of deprecation on it which makes me slightly irritated.Robyn and I describe a delegation system on http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/process-delegation-workbench/
Jeff, there was a security issue designed-into spMakeWebTask. Actually, as well as that it used to kill the server intermittently under heavy use when I first used it in v7 . (They fixed that in 2000).
There is nothing quite so useful as spMakeWebTask for the busy programmer doing lots of reporting. I don't quite buy the idea that SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) is as handy. One day, maybe I can persuade Robyn to do a workbench on it, along with a nifty CLR that does the same job.
Yep... that's how we ended up fixing it... a proxy user/delegation system. "Works fine, fails safe, and drains to the bilge".
Again, my point is, it was fully documented and, although I admit the change in security was necessary to cover a security loop hole, the change had an impact just as if an undocumented feature had been used. The only difference is that they included the fact in the "what changed" section of the service pack documentation. Code still needed to be fixed. Like I said, wait until they fix the very well documented SUM() OVER... lot's of people are gonna have to fix a lot of code just as if an undocumented feature had changed. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.