Learn about a simple way to run uniform tasks in parallel using self-deleting jobs.  Read more...

SQL Monitor’s Job duration unusual alert is a powerful tool for keeping track of most jobs in your SQL Server environment. It works by comparing the running time of any job instance against the median for that job, and identifying when a variation in the job duration could hint at a performance problem. However, if your environment contains big jobs whose durations vary by several orders of magnitudes, it can be tricky to specify what kind of variation is expected and what would be unusual. For these cases, it is possible to go beyond the functionality of the built-in alert with a custom metric.  Read more...

MySQL introduced its own brand of job scheduling, called Events, in version 5.1. However, some Database Administrators (DBAs) feel that it isn't quite ready for prime time. This article presents a hybrid solution that uses MySQL Event Scheduling to manage the batch jobs and Windows PowerShell for the error handling.  Read more...

A quick how-to on configuring SQL Server Agent alerts to manage file space usage.  Read more...

This article has a T-SQL function to detect the SQL Agent job state.  Read more...

Continuing with his series on monitoring your SQL Servers, David Bird now looks a a way to fin those long running, active jobs.  Read more...

The Replication infrastructure in SQL Server is implemented using SQL Server Agent to execute the various components involved in the form of a job (e.g. LogReader agent job, Distribution agent job, Merge agent job) SQL Server jobs execute a binary executable file which is basically C++ code.  Read more...

I work in a fairly large and unwieldy SQL Server shop. Our environment is the wild west. I have DBAs and Developers on my team that create SQL Server Agent Jobs all of the time and there is never an operator setup to email anyone based on a failure condition. I know the right solution here is to "tame the wild west" by locking down the environment and setting up a change management process, but I think that is a topic for another day. Can you give me some idea of how to identify the new recently created SQL Server Agent Jobs and Jobs without an operator setup to email us for a failure condition? I would like to receive emails when either of these conditions occur. Check out the solution to this tip to learn how.   Read more...

SQL Server Agent jobs are made up of a series of one or more Job Steps. A job step is assigned to a specific job subsystem, which identifies the kind of work the job step is going to perform. Each job step runs in a separate security context, although each job also has an owner that determines who can modify the job.  Read more...

The system stored procedure sp_start_job is a very useful T-SQL command that starts a SQL Agent job. The problem with this is that it starts the job and it doesn't wait until the job is finished and sometimes I want to start a job and wait until the job is finished and move on to another job or task that depends on the result of the previous job.  Read more...

In a previous tip, the tip reviewed several steps for a better and improved environment for scheduled jobs. I am totally convinced with the recommendations and want to implement these for my scheduled jobs. To make this easier, I want to create a template so I can produce a suitable and reliable way of updates for my production server. In this tip I provide a step by step exercise to perform on a test server to prepare the customized and tested scripts to run on the production server.  Read more...

The provided SSIS package contains a single script task that will script all SQL Server 2000/2005/2008 Agent Jobs into individual files.  Read more...

Continuing with his series on monitoring your SQL Servers, David Bird now looks a a way to fin those long running, active jobs.  Read more...

Provides Stored Procedures and SSRS Report to show job status with details of errors.  Read more...

 A colleague pointed out a site that collects a lot of job posting data and exposes graphs - so I've taken...  Read more...

This article shows ways of getting feedback to your users when running a SQL Server agent job from an ASP.NET page  Read more...

Keeping track of the jobs you have running across all your servers can be a challenge these days with fewer and fewer employees. New author Sivakumar Mahalingam brings us an article that shows one way to accomplish this task.  Read more...

It is often the case in large DBA teams where multiple DBAs can administer the same SQL Servers and it is not apparent to one DBA the importance of some of the jobs to another DBA. In this tip I show how you can be alerted of these changes.  Read more...

Everyone has an opinion on the best advice to give an IT person who is unemployed and wants to get back into paid work. Phil Factor outlines what he would advise.  Read more...

This article will show you how you can execute a SQL job with one click, allowing anyone to do this. Author Divya Agrawal shows a technique to let other users run jobs that do things such as perform a backup with a batch file.  Read more...