• Yes. It's development in production. It will bite you, sooner or later.

    Develop on the dev machine. Get a copy of SQL Server Developer Edition ($43 on Amazon), if you haven't got one already. if you have to, set up a virtual machine on the dev box, so you can parallel things like drive letters and network connections, and use that.

    Let your boss know (if that's not you) that you need dev and QA machines, even if they're virtual servers. There will be costs, but, in the long run, they'll save money.

    First time you run an SSIS package that accidentally deletes the wrong data or loads malformed data into a table, or dumps the junk data in the real table and the good data in a trashbin table, or whatever, it'll either result in nothing bad at all, if it's on a dev/QA server, or in potential job loss and financial problems, etc., for you and the company, if it's in production.

    Prior small company I worked for let some devs work on the production database. One of them accidentally updated every customer's password (essentially locking all the customers out of the whole website) when he didn't select all the lines of his update statement and thus left out the Where clause. Simple mousing error. Huge problem.

    So, yeah, it's a bad thing to develop on the production server. Too easy to commit database suicide.

    - Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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