SQL Server Agent wishes

  • Greetings,

    In addition to general Agent questions, it would be great to hear the pains and pleasures of using Agent.

    - Rob


    - Rob

  • An enhancement I would like to see is when you go to the Maintenance wizard to schedule, update stats, db integrity, database backup is to NOT have to specify a time for all three to run. It would really be nice if you could say run this 'process' at 6PM, one task after another. I run the update stats once a week at say 7 PM, then turn around and scheduled the integrity daily at 7:30, then the db backup at 7:40. The problem arises when the database starts to grow over time and you might have the processes running into each other. I would like to say start the first process at 7 PM and run all three processes back to back upon successful completion of each process.

  • I agree with Mark! The ability to set dependencies on jobs, in addition to time, would be of great value. Although this can be done within DTS packages, I often have situations arise where a temporary set of dependencies would save a lot of time - without the need for modifying the packages themselves. Another enhancement that I would like to see is the ability to restart a failed job from a specific point in the process. Currently, I have to figure out where it failed, open the DTS package, and create a temporarily package that begins where the original died, and then reschedule it.

  • Hi Rob,

    I think that the best thing that you guys could add would be a server role to allow non-SAs to view and manage jobs, regardless of ownership. I have been able to pull this off manually, but it would be great to have a role that I could just add users to without having to jump thru a lot of hoops 🙂

    Thanks,

    James

  • The enhancement we really need is the ability to email notifications for job failures without requiring SQL Mail or that a MAPI client be installed.

    We have a SQL Server cluster, on which MAPI is not officially supported, and in any case our IT folks believe MAPI clients are a security risk and will not allow them to be installed on production machines. Without MAPI, there is no SQL Mail, with no SQL Mail, there is no built-in email notification for SQL Server Agent job failures, leaving me to use a CDOSys kludge so I can be alerted when a job fails.

    Julie Liles

  • We nave a product called NetIQ that looks at the event logs on all of our SQL Servers for a specific message with a SQL Server job failure and when it finds one it emails me! Works Great!

  • We are aware of the issues using MAPI and are considering an alternative in the next version of SQL Server.

    Thanks for your comment!

    - Rob


    - Rob

  • It would be wonderful if jobs could be owned by Windows groups rather then individual users. We have 60 or so applications running 400+ jobs and the DBAs do not want to be in the job restart business. We have created a batch process to allow them to restart their jobs but they still cannot see them in EM and our process is cludgy at best, but it works.

  • I know some of these points have already been covered, but just to show there is more than 1 person asking I've covered them again-

    Reliable mail, not using MAPI. This is my biggest problem with agent by a long way.

    Resuabale schedules, so that I define a schedule once, and use it for multiple jobs.

    Increased character limit for job step code.

    Job dependencies, as discussed already. I know multiple job steps do allow this to some degree, but it reduces visibility.

    Use of the tokens in job steop commands is great, could be highlighted and maybe even expanded. [A-MSG] is very useful, but with a generic job used for multiple errors and error messages that contain single or double quotes, I have to have two jobs, one for single quote messages and one for double quote messages.

    Obviously a new CLR subsystem would be good.

    Greater frequancy of running jobs, down to seconds.

    Job schedules and pager on duty schedules that can be manipulated to account for holidays and such like. My out of hours scheduled is overnight, weekends, but I also want to expand this to public holidays, and not by changing every job/operator the week before, and then changing back again.

    Expandable messaging mechanisms, such that I can write my own component, implementing the "SQL Agent" interface and use this instead of the supplied email/net send/pager.

    Automatic termination and notification of long running jobs. Processes do hang, and this would be good for when that happens.

    Just a few ideas.

    Thanks

    Darren Green

    Darren Green
    SQLDTS.com   |   SQLIS.com   |   Konesans Ltd

  • I would love to see the functionality of SQL Mail from 7.0 restored to SQL 2K and higher. Specifically in 7.0 when you sent e-mail it was retained in the "Sent folder" now you have to copy the server and/or someone else to retain records that you sent the e-mail.

    AJ Ahrens

    SQL DBA

    Custom Billing AT&T Labs



    Good Hunting!

    AJ Ahrens


    webmaster@kritter.net

  • My wishes(not necessarily in order of desire):

    1. Reuse schedules instead of creating them everytime.

    2. Allow DTSrun to show the DTS name and not the encrypted name so I can go back after someone and match jobs to packages.

    3. Have another way to notify me besides needing a MAPI client or modem installed on my production box.

    Thanks for listening,

    Michelle



    Michelle

  • How about when you schedule a DTS package you can see the name instead of some encrypted algorithm that you cannot decipher

    AJ Ahrens

    SQL DBA

    Custom Billing AT&T Labs



    Good Hunting!

    AJ Ahrens


    webmaster@kritter.net

  • Can we recycle the SQLAgent log just like we can the MS SQL Error log? I don't want to have to cycle SQL Agent to do it.

    Thanks

    Chris Wood

    Alberta Department of Energy

    CANADA

  • I would like to see more options available for the account that the jobs actually run under rather than just the SQL Agent account or the proxy account. I would like to set the account that the job will run as, much as you do for the job owenr.

    Thanks

    Peter

  • quote:


    I would love to see the functionality of SQL Mail from 7.0 restored to SQL 2K and higher. Specifically in 7.0 when you sent e-mail it was retained in the "Sent folder" now you have to copy the server and/or someone else to retain records that you sent the e-mail.

    AJ Ahrens

    SQL DBA

    Custom Billing AT&T Labs


    AJ, there is a check box within the sqlmail configuration for sql agent which you can check that keeps a copy of the email in sent items.



    Shamless self promotion - read my blog http://sirsql.net

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