What do the Categories in SQL Server Agent Jobs mean?

Question

This is the first time I am trying for the SQL Job Agent...I was trying to create the sample job and I got struck in between when it came to select the Category as highlighted in the below screen shot

I am new to SQL Server can you explain the meanings of categories as mentioned above? or any link will be hightly appreciated.

Answer 1

Categories are used for organizing your jobs. If you right click on the jobs folder and select "Manage Categories" you can see all of the categories available, filter by category, etc.

There is a good breakdown here:

http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1484/custom-job-categories-to-organize-your-sql-agent-jobs/

Answer 2

They don't affect the job at all - they're merely a means of organizing jobs - quite helpful if you have a lot of jobs on a single server.

You can add your own categories using sp_add_category in msdb.

Many of the built in categories will be used automatically when you're setting up other parts of SQL Server, and it adds jobs. E.g. if you set up merge replication, you'll find that some jobs are added under the REPL-Merge category.

Answer 3

Try checking Tim Ford's article on the categories:

Edit:

Actually, sorry. It describes how to add categories, but not what the existing categories are.

• Data Collector is an option in SQL Server to collect information about the system
• The tuning advisor is meant to find the optimal execution path
• Database maintenance is for jobs that perform maintenance (like a reindex or statistics update)
• Full-Text involves full-text indexing, which allows for searching text fields
• MSX is multiple server Administration (i.e. schedule a job on a master server that will then propagate the job to other servers)
• Log shipping is a system for high availability, where the transaction log records periodically are sent to a standby server that can be brought online in case of an emergency
• REPL is short for replication

Answer 4

Job categories help you organize your jobs for easy filtering and grouping.
if you are having multiple job for same type of task or operations than you can categoris your job as per the job nature

read more from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191128.aspx