Category: SQL Agent

Andy Galbraith shows how long that SQL Agent job ran:

So….when did “DatabaseIntegrityCheck – SYSTEM_DATABASES” start? At 1500 – is that 3pm?  You may be able hash out that this translates to 12:15am local time…but what if you want to perform datetime-style math on the RunDate/RunTime?  Sure you can do multiple leaps to say (RunDate>X and RunDate<=Y) AND (RunTime>A and RunTime<=B), but you then need to explicitly format your X, Y, A, and B in the appropriate integer-style format.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just be able to datetime math?

The next part is even worse – quick – how long did the first instance of “ServerA_RESTORE_FROM_PROD_V2” run?

4,131 somethings (seconds, ms, etc), right?

Maybe (maybe!) there was a valid reason for the SQL Agent tables to have such screwy values for date, time, and duration; regardless, this is a sheer pain to deal with today.

Steve Jones picks his favorite SQL Server feature:

I’ve seen the platform grow and expand quite a bit. I’ve spoken on a number of topics over the years, as my jobs have changed and my emphasis has wandered. Of all the features available, however, if I have to choose one, it would be…

SQL Agent.

I’m a programmer at heart. I grew up admiring the power of computers to execute code over and over again. I appreciate the ability of computers to remember things and remind me, or to handle them on their own.

SQL Agent has quirks, but a fully-featured scheduling system integrated into the database engine is extremely powerful.

Jen McCown has written a function to simplify getting SQL Agent job names:

So yeah, now it takes fewer keystrokes to get the job name. I used to:

SELECT *
FROM msdb..sysjobschedules
WHERE job_id IN ( SELECT job_id
FROM msdb..sysjobs
WHERE name LIKE ‘CollectorDBFilePropertiesGet-%’ );

But now I:

SELECT *
FROM msdb..sysjobschedules
WHERE dbo.JobName(job_id) LIKE ‘CollectorDBFilePropertiesGet-%’ ;

Jen’s got the function available on her site.

Thomas Rushton reminds us to check our clocks and our SQL Agent jobs:

At 1am the time jumps straight to 2am. Got any jobs scheduled to run at 01:30? They ain’t going to happen. I hope they weren’t important.

He also has the start of a script which helps fix timing issues, either from losing an hour in spring or gaining an hour in fall.  This is a timely reminder (no pun intended) that Daylight Savings Time begins on Sunday, March 13th this year in the US and March 27th in most of Europe.

Andy Mallon introduces us to xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs, tells us not to use it, and gives us an alternative:

If you landed on this post, I’m guessing you know the answer to this, so I’ll be quick. xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs is an undocumented (and thus, unsupported) extended procedure that gives information on whether a job is currently running, when it last ran, when it runs next, etc.

The supported alternative is to use sp_help_job (which calls xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs), but sp_help_job is difficult to use in automation because trying to do INSERT #temp EXEC sp_help_job will result in an error due to nested INSERT…EXEC statements. As a result, people often turn to calling the unsupported xp directly.

I never actually knew about this procedure; I always just wrote queries against the msdb tables.  Andy’s solution is more elegant than what I normally come up with, though.

Kenneth Fisher talks SQL Server Agent schedules:

Because you can re-use the schedules you want to be careful naming them. I’ve seen far to many schedules named Schedule 1 or Job Name Schedule. The first is non-descriptive and the second too specific (it would look silly as the schedule for another job with a different name). Give your schedules names like Every Weekday at 4AM or The third of the month at 6AM. This way when you go to pick the right schedule you know which one is which.

Word of warning (which Kenneth also notes):  be careful about modifying those schedules; if you think you’re editing the schedule for just one job, you might actually be modifying schedules for a bunch of jobs.

Chris Bell uses Powershell to alert us when the SQL Agent service goes down:

Now that we have our PS1 file that will send the email alert, but we need to have the job run when the service fails. To set this open up services and right click on the SQLServerAgent service you wish to add the failure alert to and select properties. Navigate to the Recovery tab and set one of the failure actions to “Run a Program” I tend to choose it as the first failure action as I like to look at why my service failed before I just restart it. You can attempt to restart first and then run the program on if it fails again by setting the second failure to run a program. The choice is yours!

Very cool.