Jack Corbett (12/11/2009)
The reason I don't use the CLR is simple. I haven't had a task where I found it to be necessary. I don't work on big, high transaction systems where milking the a few milliseconds or even seconds of performance is necessary so the time needed to optimize to that level is better used elsewhere. Before I get flamed for saying that, I do attempt to write the best-performing code I can, but I don't have to seek out faster solutions if the customer (end-user) is satisfied.
Anecdotally a couple of times I tested CLR vs pure T-sql solutions the pure T-sql solution was faster. I make some very limited use of it, but only in cases where generating the answer in T-sql is very awkward but for one reason or another I want the functionality at the SQL Server level instead of in the application.
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Timothy A Wiseman
SQL Blog: http://timothyawiseman.wordpress.com/