You're right about my latter statement. On the second reading, I realized that I was unclear. My English teacher had always told me not to use double negation in speech :))

What I was really trying to say was that some things that you can do with DTS, are almost impossible to do in SQL code. DTS, in fact, exposes some of the interesting functionality in SQL server that pure T_SQL can't always afford. As a example, think about ActiveX transformations--these are very powerful. I'm doing all kinds of actions and transformations using VBscript and ActiveX, and combined with parallel execution of tasks, as well as flexible logic and execution precedence (i.e. generating DTS packages and tasks within DTS packages on the fly at run-time), DTS does win the race here, I think.

And the least argument....As with every other Micro$oft product, you never get the full scripting capabilities of something that is otherwise wriiten as an application. That is to say that SQL server is written as whole bunch of pre-made objects, and traditionally, Microsoft doesn't provide you with a full scripting access to all of its functions. Therefore, T-SQL can't provide as much access to some areas of SQL server that DTS can. I know this last statement is pretty vague and weak as an argument, but it's more of a philosophical nature, rather than of technical.....

regards,

Mark.

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Thanks for the reply. I've never created a linked server in code before. I'll look into that. Sounds like a good option.

With regards to the DTS vs TSQL comment, you lost me somewhere in the double negative. I was trying to say, if it can be done with a dts package, it can be done in tsql script.

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