SQL Server Agent

SQL Server Agent is a process which executes SQL jobs and handles other automated tasks. It can be configured to run automatically when the system boots or it can be started manually. It is a component of Microsoft SQL Server.

SQL Agent Configuration Behind the scenes, SQL Agent Job definitions are specified in the msdb database. You might remember the msdb database from a previous lesson. It is a system database that is created when you first install SQL Server.

You don't really need to know that in order to use the SQL Agent Service though. You can configure SQL Server Agent jobs, alerts and operators via Enterprise Manager. Applications that use SQL-DMO or Transact-SQL with a standard database API can also do this, but for now, we'll stick with Enterprise Manager.

Is the SQL Server Agent Running? By looking at the screen shot above, I can tell that the SQL Server Agent Service is not running. The icon is what gives it away. Here's what the icon should look like:

Running Not Running The reason I'm re-iterating this is because I have been caught out so many times with this. It's so easy to create a SQL job that its so easy to forget to check whether the SQL Server Agent is even running. Normally, in a production environment, the SQL Server Agent will be running constantly. In a development environment, you may choose to disable it until you need to test it.