This as many of my blogs, is another DBA task and typically isn't required in a user released reporting situation. I have used it a few times for very specialized reports that the user community runs, so it's possible that you may also be able to use it there. One thing I stress is the use of unsafe assembly in this write and the examples I just put together in order to write the blog for everyone. Security on assemblys might be a good follow up blog.

Two things I'm going to show you today. First is how to scan the network for instances using a SQLCLR UDF. The second is how t...

Background

I have a report that returns specific documentation from the database with one parameter, a CustomerID. The report is bound to a stored procedure which has hard-coded in it the names of the specific documents that should be included. This solution is problematic because when the list of documents needs to change, the SP has to be updated, which means mistakes can be (and have been) made.

The good step of converting the SP to use a table doesn't satisfy me fully, because these reports are executed from a special reporting system that also has its own list of docu...