Skip to Content
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible
book

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible

by Paul Nielsen, Mike White, Uttam Parui
August 2009
Beginner to intermediate
1680 pages
42h 30m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Bible

Chapter 43. Automating Database Maintenance with SQL Server Agent

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Setting up SQL Server Agent

  • Understanding alerts, operators, and jobs

  • Managing alerts

  • Managing operators

  • Managing jobs

  • Setting up Database Mail

The automation of database maintenance is crucial to ensuring that a database is regularly checked, maintained, and optimized. Automated checking consists of monitoring database size to identify issues before they generate mayhem; maintenance includes frequent backups; and optimization involves tweaking the index configuration for optimal performance. Automation ensures that these activities do not consume too much of your time, so you can focus on more pressing issues (such as improving your golf game, perhaps).

Ideally, SQL Server can monitor itself and send alerts when it encounters a critical condition. Luckily Microsoft grants this specific wish, because SQL Server includes a powerful component that can send alerts when specific critical conditions occur. Better still, this same component also enables the scheduling of routine maintenance tasks either on a one-time basis or on a recurring basis—for example, once a month or, say, on the first Saturday of every month. SQL Server Agent is the service responsible for processing alerts and running scheduled jobs.

Note

SQL Server Agent service is not available in SQL Server Express Edition, for which scheduling of jobs has to be done using Windows Scheduler. For more information on Windows Scheduler, search the web, using ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Ray Rankins, Paul Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein
Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 Unleashed

Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 Unleashed

Ray Rankins, Paul Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein, Tudor Trufinescu, John Kane

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470257043Purchase book