Here's a small, stupid, recent example where I needed RDP access: Making a registry change so that OPENROWSET() calls can read in pipe-delimited files (instead of comma-delimited) for a large ETL project and then changing it back. (SQL 2005 Enterprise, I sure hope this has been changed in more recent releases to accommodate other delimiters without a registry change!)

Here's a URL[/url] in case anyone else needs to know how to do this, by the way.

This is a completely candid and non-sarcastic comment coming up, though it may sound like snark: as a former sysadmin and current DBA, I'd be much more concerned about a sysadmin accessing a SQL server than the other way around. Why? I know few SQL DBAs who aren't familiar with Windows server OS's, but I know lots of Windows sysadmins who know nothing about SQL Server. ("We needed to re-boot the server after a Windows update. Was that a bad time for your 10-million-row ETL process?")

I will encourage you to think about this as a collaboration, not a competition. You and your DBAs -- TOGETHER -- hold the keys to the kingdom: your company's data. Your users (from clerks to CIO) expect your systems to be available, efficient, and secure. Ask yourself how you and your DBAs can best achieve that?

Trust is important. I work in a small shop and our sysadmin has full, unfettered access to the SQL Servers. Yet he never reboots or even logs into one without talking to me first, b/c he knows that he doesn't know what he's doing and wants to make sure that systems continue to function. I, in turn, don't make any Windows- or VM-related changes (extending disk volumes, allocating add'l RAM from the VM farm, etc.) without discussing it with him first.

Kudos to you for asking the question and not simply shutting off your DBAs.

Rich