Hey Jason,

I know this post is very old, but I'm hoping you still read this...

Is there any way to get this working as a User Defined Function on x64 SQL Server, similar to your original solution?  Your 64-bit solution requires a stored procedure (probably because you need to save the output of xp_cmdshell into a temp table, which is not allowed in a UDF).

We used the UDF/CLR method in a lot of external aplications and it would be too much of a burden to change all of thoese references to call a SPROC instead of a UDF.  We are now upgrading to x64 SQL Server and I ran into the roadblock of having the 32-bit SlxOleDb provider.  So far, it seems like our only option is to downgrade to 32-bit SQL server on the new server...any other ideas?