Garry Bargsley solves a problem:
Many routine administrative tasks that have traditionally been handled by SQL Agent still need to be performed:
- Scheduled stored procedures
- ETL processes
- Report generation
- Data cleanup
- Monitoring and alerting
- Business process automation
However, Azure SQL Database does not include SQL Agent.
Garry provides several solutions, and I would add to it third-party job scheduling solutions. Granted, that’s usually an extra expense (whether due to fees or supporting a roll-your-own solution), but it’s on the table. And some of them are better than what SQL Agent has to offer, even if I do like the fact that there’s an okay option built-in for DBAs.