My saying that James is spot on is kinda like a weekend Cessna pilot saying that a NASA astronaut has it spot on. Yes, a SQL Server Specialist can disable the triggers and no one would know.
As far as read only, it is crucial that it be read only (although it is read/write). One, if you had a big lime lawsuit and they subpoenaed your SQL Server Data, it would be good to know that there was no way you could change the data. Also, as James said, if you could write, you could really screw things up that could be fixed with a backup, but it would be rather difficult to explain to AC support that you need help because you changed the data in an entire table.
The irony is the username for Jon's SQL Server 2005 Express database for the sa was sa, and the password was one that would be hard to guess but was a little like using your cat's name, your birthday and the all too often used !$ or 1$ at the end.
Certainly, AC support already has enough issues troubleshooting a problem when 5,000 users have 5,000 slightly different network configurations. But, if they had altered the database, that could make things unfixable without a backup.
It would kind of be like asking Microsoft support for help after deleting 100 registry keys without backing up the registry. Of course, there are many times that changing the registry is helpful, but as James would tell you, making a backup of that is pretty simple.
James will also tell you, especially with backups of your VMs or server, backing it up and then seeing there is a backup is not really testing your backup. You have to actually test if you can restore from that backup (of course, not restoring over your production data).
And, I am putting words in James' mouth so hopefully he will correct everything I am positing he would say. (Did I use that word correctly)
Last edited by Bert; 10/16/2022 2:13 PM.
