The primary attributes of an operator are name and contact information. It is recommended that you define operators before you define alerts. You must set up one or more of these to notify an operator:
SQL Server Agent requires a valid mail profile in order to send e-mail. Examples of MAPI-1 clients include Microsoft® Outlook™ and Microsoft Exchange client.
You need these to use the pager notification features.
Every operator must have a name. Operator names must be unique and can be no longer than 128 characters.
An operator’s contact information defines how the operator is notified. Operators can be notified by e-mail, pager, or net send:
SQL Server Agent establishes its own mail session using the mail profile information supplied in the SQL Agent Properties dialog box.
Paging is implemented using e-mail. To set up pager notification, you must install on the mail server software that processes inbound mail and converts it to a pager message. The software can take one of several approaches, including:
The pager provider must offer this service, although the software required is generally available as part of the local mail system. For more information, see your pager documentation.
This is a variation on the first approach.
This software is proprietary to pager service providers. The software acts as a mail client that periodically processes its inbox either by interpreting all or part of the e-mail address information as a pager number, or by matching the e-mail name to a pager number in a translation table.
If all of the operators share a pager provider, you can use SQL Server Enterprise Manager to specify any special e-mail formatting required by the pager-to-e-mail system. The special formatting can be a prefix or a suffix:
Note If you are using a low-capacity alphanumeric paging system (for example, limited to 64 characters per page), you can shorten the text sent by excluding the error text from the pager notification.
The net send notification method specifies the recipient (computer or user) of a network message. This method is not supported on Microsoft Windows® 95/98 operating systems.
The fail-safe operator is notified about an alert after all pager notifications to the designated operators have failed. For example, if you have defined three operators for pager notifications and none of the designated operators can be paged, the fail-safe operator is notified.
The fail-safe operator is notified when:
Reasons for this include incorrect pager addresses and off-duty operators.
The sysnotifications system table specifies operator responsibilities for alerts.
Because the fail-safe operator is a safety feature, you cannot delete the operator assigned to fail-safe duty. You must reassign fail-safe duty to another operator or delete the fail-safe assignment before you can delete the operator assigned to fail-safe duty.
To create an operator
To assign alerts to an operator
To format pager addresses
To designate a fail-safe operator
sp_help_operator | sp_add_operator |
Operator Object | AddNotification Method |
AlertSystem Object | sp_help_notification |
sp_add_alert |