• I'd like to stress a point the author mentioned in passing: this function is UNDOCUMENTED. What does that really mean? Well, to summarize:

    1) Microsoft does not support the function. If you run into issues in production with this function, the first solution you will probably get is to remove the dependency on this function. Apart from that you're probably pretty much on your own.

    2) It could have undesirable side effects. Blocking comes immediately to mind for this function.

    3) It may not be available/accessible in the next release. That is, it can be pulled at any time, including major release, minor release, or even service pack. Sp_makewebtask anyone?

    You mentioned Paul Randall, Kimberly Tripp and Isaac Kunen in your article, but I've never seen a recommendation from them to use this in production. Every time I've seen them use this it has been to demo one-off troubleshooting. You may want to clarify this before people start asking how they can use this to do things like create their own transaction log monitoring or home-baked custom replication systems in production environments. Nobody wants to waste money on a CSS call only to find out the code they've written using undocumented functionality is not supported.