SQL Server runs SP on startup - where's the magic? - sql

We have several SQL Server 2008 R2 environments (dev, QA, Production) with databases for an ASP.NET application.
This applicaton uses ASP.NET membership and SQL Server session providers, thus we have an ASPState database.
The functionality of these providers were extended to restrict one active session per login. Our implementation added tables to TempDB, a stored proc ASPState.dbo.CreateTempTables to create these tables, and another stored proc Master.dbo.ASPState_Startup which calls the SP in ASPState.
On my dev machine and in production, when SQL Server is started Master.dbo.ASPState_Startup is executed and the tables are created.
I am setting up a new QA environment and cannot figure out how that happens (so in QA, the tables are not added to TempDB on startup). I have compared schema and permissions manually and via Red Gate's compare tool and find no differences there.
I checked the jobs and none call either of these stored procs.
Any ideas of where the magic is hiding?
Thanks,
Scott

sp_procoption is the "magic":
Sets or clears a stored procedure for automatic execution. A stored procedure that is set to automatic execution runs every time an instance of SQL Server is started.
EXEC sp_procoption #ProcName = 'ASPState_Startup'
, #OptionName = 'startup'
, #OptionValue = 'on';

Related

No insert happens on linked server Express version when Agent Job activates stored procedure from linked Enterprise version server

Using SSMS with linked servers. Have stored procedure in Express version that performs a table insert. When the stored procedure is run locally, the table insert works.
When I run an Agent Job executing the stored procedure from the linked Enterprise version, the table insert does not happen. Linked servers are set up properly - I have all permissions turned on for both target table and stored procedures.

Execute custom sql procedure in MS Master Data Services 2012 Database

My goal is to launch stored procedure from another DB (not MDS DB) when user commits Verion to start ETL process. For that in MDS DB i've added launching custom stored procedure in [mdm].[udpVersionSave].
But when i'm trying to commit Version in MDS Web interface, nothing happens - Version doesn't become commited. BTW, when i launch procedure from MDS DB - it's working.
My guess - the problem is in user\login access. But i try a lot combinations in giving access - nothing helped.
UPD.:
Code which launches stored procedure:
execute [AdventureWorksDW2012].[dbo].[sp__test_insert_data] #code = N'3';
Code of procedure sp__test_insert_data:
insert into AdventureWorksDW2012.dbo._test_insert_data(col_ver)
values (#code);
Procedure sp__test_insert_data works fine, when i'm launching it manually under sa.
Any ideas?

Stored Procedure stopped working

I have a stored procedure that I'm positive of has no errors but I recently deleted the table it references but imported a backup with the same name exactly and same column settings (including identity) that the previous one had but now it doesn't work.
Is there any reason that having deleted the table but importing a new would break the stored procedure?
BTW: Running Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition w/ IIS.
you can try to recompile the stored procedure with:
exec sp_recompile YourProblemTableNameHere
this will recompile all procedures that use the YourProblemTableNameHere table. But that is just a guess based on the very limited info given.

How to run a stored procedure every day in SQL Server Express Edition?

How is it possible to run a stored procedure at a particular time every day in SQL Server Express Edition?
Notes:
This is needed to truncate an audit table
An alternative would be to modify the insert query but this is probably less efficient
SQL Server Express Edition does not have the SQL Server Agent
Related Questions:
How can I schedule a daily backup with SQl Server Express?
Scheduled run of stored procedure on SQL Server
Since SQL Server express does not come with SQL Agent, you can use the Windows scheduler to run a SQLCMD with a stored proc or a SQL script.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162773.aspx
I found the following mechanism worked for me.
USE Master
GO
IF EXISTS( SELECT *
FROM sys.objects
WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[MyBackgroundTask]')
AND type in (N'P', N'PC'))
DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[MyBackgroundTask]
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE MyBackgroundTask
AS
BEGIN
-- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
-- interfering with SELECT statements.
SET NOCOUNT ON;
-- The interval between cleanup attempts
declare #timeToRun nvarchar(50)
set #timeToRun = '03:33:33'
while 1 = 1
begin
waitfor time #timeToRun
begin
execute [MyDatabaseName].[dbo].[MyDatabaseStoredProcedure];
end
end
END
GO
-- Run the procedure when the master database starts.
sp_procoption #ProcName = 'MyBackgroundTask',
#OptionName = 'startup',
#OptionValue = 'on'
GO
Some notes:
It is worth writing an audit entry somewhere so that you can see that the query actually ran.
The server needs rebooting once to ensure that the script runs the first time.
Create a scheduled task that calls "C:\YourDirNameHere\TaskScript.vbs" on startup. VBScript should perform repeated task execution (in this example, it's a 15 minute loop)
Via command line (must run cmd.exe as administrator):
schtasks.exe /create /tn "TaskNameHere" /tr "\"C:\YourDirNameHere\TaskScript.vbs\" " /sc ONSTARTUP
Example TaskScript.vbs: This executes your custom SQL script silently using RunSQLScript.bat
Do While 1
WScript.Sleep(60000*15)
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.RUN "cmd /c C:\YourDirNameHere\RunSQLScript.bat C:\YourDirNameHere\Some_TSQL_Script.sql", 0
Loop
RunSQLScript.bat: This uses sqlcmd to call the database instance and execute the SQL script
#echo off
sqlcmd -S .\SQLEXPRESS -i %1
If you are using Express Edition, you will need to use the Windows Scheduler or the application connecting to the server in some way.
You would use the scheduler to run sqlcmd. Here are some instructions for getting the sqlcmd working with express edition.
SQL Scheduler from http://www.lazycoding.com/products.aspx
Free and simple
Supports all versions of SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008
Supports unlimited SQL Server instances with an unlimited number of jobs.
Allows to easily schedule SQL Server maintenance tasks: backups, index rebuilds, integrity checks, etc.
Runs as Windows Service
Email notifications on job success and failure
Since another similar question was asked, and will likely be closed as a duplicate of this one, and there are many options not mentioned in the answers already present here...
Since you are using SQL Express you can't use SQL Server Agent. However there are many alternatives, all of which you can schedule using AT or Windows Task Scheduler depending on your operating system:
VBScript
C# command line app
batch file with SQLCMD
PowerShell
All of these languages/tools (and many others) have the capacity to connect to SQL Server and execute a stored procedure. You can also try these Agent replacements:
SQLScheduler
Express Agent
Standalone SQL Agent (beta)
The easiest way I have found to tackle this issue is to create a query that executes the stored procedure then save it. The query should look similar to this one below.
use [database name]
exec storedproc.sql
Then create a batch file with something similar to the code below in it.
sqlcmd -S servername\SQLExpress -i c:\expressmaint.sql
Then have the task scheduler execute the batch as often as you like
Another approach to scheduling in SQL Express is to use Service Broker Conversation Timers. To run a stored procedure periodically, which you can use to bootstrap a custom scheduler.
See eg Scheduling Jobs in SQL Server Express
You could use Task Scheduler to fire a simple console app that would execute the Sql statement.
As you have correctly noted, without the agent process, you will need something else external to the server, perhaps a service you write and install or Windows scheduler.
Note that with an Express installation for a local application, it is possible that the machine may not be on at the time you want to truncate the table (say you set it to truncate every night at midnight, but the user never has his machine on).
So your scheduled task is never run and your audit log gets out of control (this is a problem with SQL Server Agent as well, but one would assume that a real server would be running non-stop). A better strategy if this situation fits yours might be to have the application do it on demand when it detects that it has been more than X days since truncation or whatever your operation is.
Another thing to look at is if you are talking about a Web Application, there might be time when the application is loaded, and the operation could be done when that event fires.
As mentioned in the comment, there is sp_procoption - this could allow your SP to run each time the engine is started - the drawbacks with this method are that for long-running instances, there might be a long time between calls, and it still has issues if the engine is not running at the times you need the operation to be done.
Our company also use SQLEXPRESS and there is no SQL Agent.
Since there is no marked answer as "right" and all the solutions are quite complex I'll share what I did there. May be its really bad, but it worked great to me.
I've chosen operations of Insertion (people do) to a table that got closely the same time range i needed and made a trigger "ON INSERT" that applies needed function.

SQL Server, Remote Stored Procedure, and DTC Transactions

Our organization has a lot of its essential data in a mainframe Adabas database. We have ODBC access to this data and from C# have queried/updated it successfully using ODBC/Natural "stored procedures".
What we'd like to be able to do now is to query a mainframe table from within SQL Server 2005 stored procs, dump the results into a table variable, massage it, and join the result with native SQL data as a result set.
The execution of the Natural proc from SQL works fine when we're just selecting it; however, when we insert the result into a table variable SQL seems to be starting a distributed transaction that in turn seems to be wreaking havoc with our connections.
Given that we're not performing updates, is it possible to turn off this DTC-escalation behavior?
Any tips on getting DTC set up properly to talk to DataDirect's (formerly Neon Systems) Shadow ODBC driver?
Check out SET REMOTE_PROC_TRANSACTIONS OFF which should disable it.
Or sp_serveroption to configure the linked server generally, not per batch.
Because you are writing on the MS SQL side, you start a transaction.
By default, it escalates whether it needs to or not.
Even though the table variable does not particapate in the transaction.
I've had similar issues before where the MS SQL side behaves differently based on if MS SQL writes, in a stored proc and other stuff. The most reliable way I found was to use dynamic SQL calls to my Sybase linked server...
The following code sets the "Enable Promotion of Distributed Transactions" for linked servers:
USE [master]
GO
EXEC master.dbo.sp_serveroption #server=N'REMOTE_SERVER', #optname=N'remote proc transaction promotion', #optvalue=N'false'
GO
This will allow you to insert the results of a linked server stored procedure call into a table variable.
I'm not sure about DTC, but DTSX (Integration Services) may be useful for moving the data. However, if you can simply query the data, you may want to look at adding a linked server for direct access. You could then just write a simple query to populate your table based on a select from the linked server's table.
That's true. As you might guess, the Natural procedures we want to call do lookups and calculations that we'd like to keep at that level if possible.