First, I would like to thank you for taking the time to respond.

We purchased some library automation software. The automation software has a VB client and runs against a MS SQL Server v7.0. This software does not install anything on the SQL server itself besides the data structures and stored procedures within. This was one of the selling points when we were considering the product. It is my opinion, the server should run natively without any applications installed on the server itself (for performance and security reasons).

The problem began when we asked for a special view that we could use to insert/update patrons. We would like to synchronize the patron table with our student table several times a day. I wrote some software that already connects to this SQL server and synchronizes the students from other software packages. It would be real easy for me to add another task to update our students in their patron table.

Their solution is to install an application on the SQL server itself and schedule a SQL Server Agent Job to run the application with a data file that I would provide. What are the security and performance issues when you run an application on the SQL server? Especially and importing program. Also, there are several applications that use this same SQL server.

I would really like to do the right thing here and in my eyes their approach is wrong. However, I want to be fair and get the opinions of professionals in the industry. This is the purpose of this message. Please give me your honest opinion of their approach and perhaps, if you have time, suggest something that might work better…

Thanks again for your time…

…tim