EXPERT RESPONSE
As a result of Microsoft's ambitious marketing of SQL Server 2005's .NET integration over the last few years, many developers believe that T-SQL will no longer be necessary to create SQL Server stored procedures. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), this is only partially true. While it is technically possible to create a stored procedure without using T-SQL, it is not possible to do any data access without T-SQL.
Data access within CLR stored procedures is done using the standard ADO.NET classes. Developers will find that much of the same data access code usable in application tiers will be easily portable into SQLCLR routines. As these ADO.NET classes in the middle tier require T-SQL for data access, so do the same classes used within the context of the hosted CLR provider.
I noted that it is technically possible to write a T-SQL-less stored procedure. So is there any reason to do so? One case for this is a CLR stored procedure written to retrieve data from a flat file or Web service and format it into a rowset. That would be an operation that would not require T-SQL – but it's not a good comparison with the abilities of T-SQL stored procedures.
Do you have comments on this Ask the Expert Q&A? Let us know.
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