Jayanth_Kurup (8/17/2011)
Probably not in production. While there are secure ways of using xp_cmdshell. I can't/won't trust everybody to use it the way its meant to be. I could leave the company in a few years and don't really know how others would use it and I wouldn't want to leave a bad legacy.
I have a huge appreciation for that, Jayanth... not trusting others to do things correctly either because of perceived inconvenience on their part or a simple lack of knowledge is a problem for many DBA's including myself. It's a bit of paranoia that good DBA's not only agree with, but strongly embrace, as well.
Let me change the question a bit to match this particular problem. What privs do GUI login(s) currently enjoy against your production systems? How about individual non-DBA users (including but certainly not limited to Developers)? Do they have at least "DataReader/DataWriter" privs instead of only the privs to EXECUTE "parameterized" stored procedures? If so and someone deletes or overwrites a bunch of data, would that be considered to "leave a bad legacy", as well?
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.