Impersonating a user like in Unix/Linux

We have an app that connects as a certain user (limited rights for normal
operation) to a SQL Server 2000 database running on the local machine. Its
actually MSDE, but whatever.

When we want to push out database updates, or to be able to run a backup and
zip the database so we can pull it off of our users' machines to inspect a
bug, we would like to, using the current open connection, do something like
the su command in Linux (and probably Unix). Basically, this allows you to
"be" a different user for a certain command/set of commands. Then we can
get out of su mode and go back to just being our regular old user.

Does SQL Server support anything like this? Or do we have to create a new
connection?

Its not a HUGE chore to create a new connection, but I was hoping to make
these functions as easy to use as possible, and not have to pass in a bunch
of connection information to each of these functions so that our other
programmers can just use them and move on, and not have to know a bunch of
the connection information whenever they want to do these kinds of things.

Thanks for any and all advice.

Matt

try search for "impersonate" keyword in SQL2000 documentation,
I also know that on 7.0 version where still supported the T-SQL command
"SETUSER" but it's scope was to "scale down" a sysadmin or a dbo_owner user
and not to promote a low profile user.
hope this helps, bye gio

"YYZ" wrote:

 > We have an app that connects as a certain user (limited rights for normal
 > operation) to a SQL Server 2000 database running on the local machine. Its
 > actually MSDE, but whatever.
 >
 > When we want to push out database updates, or to be able to run a backup and
 > zip the database so we can pull it off of our users' machines to inspect a
 > bug, we would like to, using the current open connection, do something like
 > the su command in Linux (and probably Unix). Basically, this allows you to
 > "be" a different user for a certain command/set of commands. Then we can
 > get out of su mode and go back to just being our regular old user.
 >
 > Does SQL Server support anything like this? Or do we have to create a new
 > connection?
 >
 > Its not a HUGE chore to create a new connection, but I was hoping to make
 > these functions as easy to use as possible, and not have to pass in a bunch
 > of connection information to each of these functions so that our other
 > programmers can just use them and move on, and not have to know a bunch of
 > the connection information whenever they want to do these kinds of things.
 >
 > Thanks for any and all advice.
 >
 > Matt
 >
 >
 >