Traditionally if you had a need to access a file or other resource outside of SQL Server, the SQL Server service account was required to have appropriate file system access to the folder or path containing the file.  With CLR integration, this is no longer an absolute requirement.  Identity Impersonation will allow you to implicitly or explicitly change the execution context inside of a SQLCLR Function, Procedure, or Trigger. 

A common part of programming in .NET is to use an configuration file to store configuration information in an easily modifiable location.  The app.config or web.config file is an invaluable inclusion in most .NET projects and developers may need to maintain this functionality as a part of logic sharing between objects in the database and the application as well.  This article will demonstrate how to configure your SQLCLR project to use Configuration Files in SQL.

This Article covers how to build a SQL Safe version of the System.Web.HttpUtility class methods HtmlEncode and HtmlDecode.  Source code is provided in the Examples area for these specific methods to be used in SQL CLR as User-Defined Functions with a SAFE Permission Set.

No matter how hard you try at some point it might become necessary for you to add a method to an existing CLR User-Defined Type to support a new business rule, or if created a single assembly with all of your objects including your CLR UDT, you may need to modify an existing function or stored procedure to meet new requirements.  This article will demonstrate how to use ALTER ASSEMBLY to perform these updates.

This article is part one of a two part series to try and show some of the versatility that CLR provides us. Part one will focus on creating a user-defined CLR function to use a XSLT file to transform a XML string and e-mail it using sp_send_dbMail.