Standalone SQL Agent

Standalone SQL Agent Update 3/2/2009

I’ve been quiet about the Standalone SQL Agent for a while now.  I haven’t forgotten about the project, in fact I’ve been busily working on it in what little free time I have.  I’ve been working on phase 2 of the project which is adding in the UI to handle job management.  Needless to say, I forgot how much I hate building User Interfaces.  I much prefer building windows services which no one sees.

I’m trying to keep the UI as simple as possible while providing all the functionality that the native job management via SSMS provides; even if not all that functionality is supported by the Standalone SQL Agent at this time.

Even though you can’t download a client installer, or the source (since I haven’t checked and in yet) I figured that I’d post a few screenshots to show where I’m at and get some feedback on it.

The first screenshot here is the job list which comes up after you select the SQL Server instance you want to connect to (yes you can connect to a remote instance so that you can manage SQL Express machines remotely).  It shows the jobs, there current state as queried from the SQL Server, if they are enabled and the Next Run Time.  Currently I’m not getting the Last Run Time back from the SQL Server so that needs to be corrected.

The next screenshot is the job step info page.  This should look very similar to what you see in SQL Server Management Studio or SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

It has the job name, owner, category, and the date information.

The third screenshot (below) are the job steps for the selected job. This screen should also look very similar to what is shown in SQL Server Management Studio and SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

I hope that this looks useful as I’m still plugging away at the UI (I hate making UIs).

I’ve also added in a command line application which will remove the three (so far) stored procedures which are placed within the msdb database.  The service puts these in place when the Agent is started, and I need a way to remove them easily during install, so I put them in a separate executable so that they could be easily removed if needed.

Denny

For those of you who live under a rock…

For those of you who live under a rock (or you don’t read SQLBatman blog) or those that don’t routienly google for “sql vagina”, SQL Batman has written a very funny post on my SQL Server Agent project.

I’m pretty sure that I’m going to get banned from the WIT luncheon by proxy on this one.

Denny

Standalone SQL Agent Phase 1 Beta 2 Released

This afternoon I’m pleased to say that I’ve released the Phase 1 Beta 2 build of the Standalone SQL Agent. Continued »

First Beta of Standalone SQL Agent released

It took me a little less time than I expected to get an acceptable build put together. Continued »

Standalone SQL Agent Status Update (Jan 28, 2009)

I’ve made some good progress on the Standalone SQL Agent that I’ve been working on. Continued »

Standalone SQL Agent Progress Update 1/9/08

I’ve reached a milestone of sorts in the development process which I’d like to share. Continued »

Standalone SQL Agent Project Kickoff Announement

If you have used SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (or SQL Server 2008 Express Edition) then you know that the SQL Agent has been removed from the product.  I have from time to time found this to be annoying as I want to do things like backup my database on a regular basis, or do other basic things.  The normal solution is to either use another SQL Server to do the scheduling, or use the Windows Task Scheduler to do the scheduling. Continued »