Monitoring Longest Running Transaction using SQL Server Agent Alerts

Step by Step guide to setup SQL Server Agent Alert for the proactive monitoring of Monitoring of Longest Running Transactions.

Automating SQL Server Agent Notification

This article looks at some automated approaches of monitoring SQL Server agent jobs.

Setting Up Your SQL Server Agent Correctly

It is important to set up SQL Server Agent Security on the principles of 'executing with minimum privileges’, and ensure that errors are properly logged and alerts are set up for a comprehensive range of errors. SQL Server Agent allows fine-grained control of every job step that should allow tasks to be run entirely safely even if they occasionally need special privileges.

SQL Server 2012 service accounts

Trigger an Email of an SSRS Report from an SSIS Package

This article demonstrates how to trigger an SSRS subscription to email a report from an Execute SQL Task using SQL Server Agent and the ReportServer.dbo.AddEvent stored procedure.

Querying SQL Server Agent Job History Data

Often times we are tasked with having to programmatically come with a list of durations per SQL Server Agent Job to trend the run times and order the results by date. Unfortunately it's not always easy in the way the data is stored in the system tables in the MSDB database. This tip explains how to use the system tables to get the data into the correct format for dates and job durations.

Never update systems tables directly - a study in Agent job scheduling

It is often recommended that system tables should not be updated directly. Presenting a case in point built around nightly job configuration in order to demonstrate the possible issues with updating system tables directly.

Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Level 12: Using MSX/TSX to scale out Job Management

Examines the scale-out capabilities of SQL Server Agent, using the MSX/TSX subsystem. This capability allows you to run jobs on multiple systems and consolidate the job results/history onto a single server.

Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Level 11: Maintenance Plan Jobs

How maintenance plans are used as SQL Server Agent jobs to automate standard system tasks. This article will also lay out some suggested jobs that should be on virtually all SQL Server systems.

Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Level 10: Using proxy accounts with your Jobs

Examines the proxy subsystem, which allows job steps to impersonate another user account in order to perform tasks as a user other than the SQL Server Agent service account. This is especially useful when you want jobs to run as lower privileged users of your SQL Server.