Recently I had to do some data manipulation against a Sybase linked server running on a Unix box. When you have a linked server you can use OPENQUERY do perform DML statements like delete, update and inserts but the syntax is a little different

So let's look at some code, first create a linked server on your machine that is linked to your machine. You can add a linked server through the wizard or through the sp_addlinkedserver stored proc

If you try to execute xp_cmdshell on a fresh install of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 you will be greeted with the following message

Server: Msg 15281, Level 16, State 1, Procedure xp_cmdshell, Line 1

SQL Server blocked access to procedure 'sys.xp_cmdshell' of component 'xp_cmdshell' because this component is turned off as part of the security configuration for this server. A system administrator can enable the use of 'xp_cmdshell' by using sp_configure. For more information about enabling 'xp_cmdshell', see "Surface Area Configuration" in SQL Server Books Online.

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