Job History in SQL Server

Question

I am trying to solve some issues regarding SQL Server jobs history from last several days with no luck. I like to show job history data as see in Log File Viewer. I run queries and get data but i am confused on how to know which step belongs to job running at particular time. Say if we have a job running every hour and it has 4 steps so when every the job runs it will insert 5 records in sysjobhistory for a successful run now i am concerned about which steps in belongs to which job running at particular time. How i can show it in a drill down report if i want to create one.

SELECT sysjobhistory.server,
         sysjobs.name
         AS
         job_name,
         CASE sysjobhistory.run_status
           WHEN 0 THEN 'Failed'
           WHEN 1 THEN 'Succeeded'
           ELSE '???'
         END
         AS
         run_status,
         Isnull(Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(8), run_date), 1, 4) + '-' +
                       Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR
                                 (8), run_date), 5, 2) + '-' +
                Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(
                          8), run_date), 7, 2), '')
         AS
         [Run DATE],
         Isnull(Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_time+1000000), 2, 2) + ':'
                 +
                       Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_time+1000000), 4, 2
                        )
                +
                ':' +
                Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_time+1000000), 6, 2), '')
         AS
         [Run TIME],
         Isnull(Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_duration+1000000), 2, 2) +
                 ':' +
                       Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_duration+1000000),
                       4,
                       2)
                + ':' +
                Substring(CONVERT(VARCHAR(7), run_duration+1000000), 6, 2),
         ''
         ) AS
         [Duration],
         sysjobhistory.step_id,
         sysjobhistory.step_name,
         sysjobhistory.MESSAGE
  FROM   msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory
         INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysjobs
           ON msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory.job_id = msdb.dbo.sysjobs.job_id

  ORDER  BY instance_id DESC

Answer 1

You could try this query. It creates a temp table of jobs based on the step_id = 0 assigning each record a unique identifier. Then it joins back to the job history table using the run time and duration. So, all the steps of one job will have the same RUN_INSTANCE value.

-- create a temporary table of instances when a job was initiated
declare @JOBS table
(
    RUN_INSTANCE uniqueidentifier, 
    job_id uniqueidentifier,
    name sysname,
    run_status int, 
    run_date int, 
    run_time int, 
    run_duration int
);

-- insert one record for each instanced job and assign it a unique identifier
insert into @JOBS
    select 
        RUN_INSTANCE = NewID(), 
        h.job_id, 
        j.name, 
        h.run_status, 
        h.run_date, 
        h.run_time, 
        h.run_duration
    from msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory h
        join msdb.dbo.sysjobs j on j.job_id = h.job_id
    where step_id = 0

-- query the jobs history
select 
    h.server,
    j.RUN_INSTANCE, 
    j.name, 
    h.step_id, 
    h.run_date, 
    h.run_time, 
    run_status = 
        case h.run_status
            when 0 then 'failed'
            when 1 then 'succeeded'
            when 2 then 'retry'
            when 3 then 'canceled'
            when 4 then 'in progress'
            else '???'
        end,
    h.message
from @JOBS j
    join msdb.dbo.sysjobhistory h on 
        h.job_id = j.job_id
        and convert(varchar(20),h.run_date) + convert(varchar(20),h.run_time) 
           between convert(varchar(20),j.run_date) + convert(varchar(20),j.run_time) 
           and convert(varchar(20),j.run_date) + convert(varchar(20),j.run_time + j.run_duration) 
order by j.RUN_INSTANCE, h.step_id