I have to agree with Phil. "New" is kind of misleading since any DBAs worth their paycheck knew about using xp_cmdshell about 15 minutes after it was introduced back around SQL 4.21 .

Given the very narrow constraint of reserving this file creation to the handful of people blessed with membership in the sysadmins role, used for specialty troubleshooting sessions and subsequent mandatory file cleanup I'd say the article's suggestion has merit. In my environments that contain HIPAA data, this would be enabled only after that Ghost Whisperer lady put me at peace by shoving me into "the light" because saying "over my dead body" wouldn't be enough.

Also, it's pretty shallow-minded to overlook that fact that while one execution of this command may seem harmless and convenient, I look at it from the fact that I have thousands of concurrent connections 7x24. Simply "appending to a file" can run my server out of space in a heartbeat if poor choices are made. In my humble opinion, [absolutely nothing] should consume space on my server's hard drives that I don't have control over.

Sound harsh? I'm the "nice guy." My security counterparts would have a field day. Shashank would get hit harder than a bag of jellybeans at a daycare.