Linked serverd id quite a big subject with the security levels, ditributed transactions etc.and I think this post could have gone in to a little more detail without detracting from the subject matter.

I think Openquery was worth mentioning and I dont think it was avoided on account of security as the way this linked server example has been set up is highly inssecure anyway.

2 interesting points I think are worth making though.

As a general rule, don't do linked security in the way noted in the article as all connections will be executed remotely with this remote user regardless of the loacal user. Better to map all allowed local users to a remote login and best to use windows security locally if possible.

Secondly there isa gothcha thats worth noting. The linked server with inner join will not work woth XML columns. You would have to use openquery and convert the remote xml field to varchar and then convert it back again.

And finally I would like to mention that, touched on in the article, the copying of a remote table to a local temp table can often be a good idea as this avoids the need for a distributed transaction and therefore reduces overhead and complexity of the security system.

Otherwise I thought the article was a pretty good introduction.

Dave