Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 03/30/07 21:41

hedgracer (d.christman@sbcglobal.net) writes:
> I would like to allow a particular user to truncate a log file in a
> stored procedure that the user runs every day. At this moment the only
> personnel that can truncate the log file are personnel with sysadmin
> rights. Is there any way to do this in sql server 2005 without
> granting this user sysadmin rights (something we REALLY don't want to
> do)? Thanks for all your help in advance.

Yes, this can be done with help of certificates. I have an article on my
web site that describes this in detail:
http://www.sommarskog.se/grantperm.html.

However, this not at all sound right to me, at least if the user would
truncate the log file every day. Truncating the log is something you
only do in exceptional cases when there is an emergency. Normally, you
either:
1) Run with full recovery and schedule regular full backups as well as
transaction log backups.
2) Run with simple recovery and schedule only full backups. The log
will be auto-truncated.

When you run with full recovery, you do so, because you want to be able
to recover the database to any given point in time. But if you truncate
the log, you lose that possibility. Which in fact is self-evident in
SQL 2005, where the only way to do this is to set the database into
simple recovery.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

[Back to original message]