To use an analogy the CLR is rather like electric power tools.

In the hands of a competent person they are a God send allowing jobs that would otherwise be difficult or time consuming to be completed both well and rapidly.

In the hands of others....well take a trip down to your local accident and emergency department.

One thing that made me prick up my ears was the MS Tech Ed presentation that said that the CLR does not site on top of the OS and SQL sits on top of that as for current .NET apps, as far as the CLR is concerned SQL is the OS and it truly is integrated into SQL.

If fact the entire Tech Ed presentation kept emphasising how the SQL 2000 bolt-ons such as notification services, analysis services, reporting services are now part of the integrated whole of SQL 2005.