SQL Server 2005 Database Mail Failures - sql

Question

I am running database mail on a SQL 2005 box. Occasionally mails fail to send, by quering the msdb.dbo.sysmail_mailitems table i can see there are items with a sent_status of "2", which is failed. I can query the sysmail_faileditems table to list all failed mails.
Is there anyway i can process/re-send these failed mail's?
Would it be reasonable to create a daily job to query this table looping through using a CURSOR to re-send the mails one by one, and then delete them from the table one by one.
If you have a better suggestion / ideas then please let me know.
Many thanks Karl

Answer 1

First up, i suggest you query faileditems to determine your main cause of failure:
SELECT items.subject ,
items.last_mod_date ,
l.description
FROM dbo.sysmail_faileditems AS items
INNER JOIN dbo.sysmail_event_log AS l ON items.mailitem_id = l.mailitem_id
If it's nothing that can be easily fixed, you can re-send them by looping through the sysmail_mailitems table and re-sending them based on the failure type (timeouts etc) in the faileditems log - some good examples in the suggestions of this blog: http://justgeeks.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/resending-sysmail-emails.html
My personal favourite:
CREATE PROCEDURE sysmail_resend_timeout
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON
DECLARE SYSMAIL_LOG_RESEND_CURSOR CURSOR READ_ONLY
FOR
SELECT DISTINCT
l.mailitem_id ,
p.name ,
m.recipients ,
m.subject ,
m.body_format ,
m.body
FROM msdb.dbo.sysmail_log l WITH ( NOLOCK )
JOIN msdb.dbo.sysmail_mailitems m WITH ( NOLOCK ) ON m.mailitem_id = l.mailitem_id
JOIN msdb.dbo.sysmail_profile p WITH ( NOLOCK ) ON p.profile_id = m.profile_id
WHERE l.event_type = 3
AND m.sent_status = 2
AND l.description LIKE '%The operation has timed out%'
ORDER BY l.mailitem_id
OPEN SYSMAIL_LOG_RESEND_CURSOR
WHILE ( 1 = 1 )
BEGIN
DECLARE #mailitem_id INT ,
#profile_name NVARCHAR(128) ,
#recipients VARCHAR(MAX) ,
#subject NVARCHAR(255) ,
#body_format VARCHAR(20) ,
#body NVARCHAR(MAX)
FETCH NEXT FROM SYSMAIL_LOG_RESEND_CURSOR INTO #mailitem_id, #profile_name, #recipients, #subject, #body_format, #body
IF NOT ##FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
BREAK
END
PRINT CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 121) + CHAR(9) + CONVERT(VARCHAR, #mailitem_id) + CHAR(9) + #recipients
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
#profile_name = #profile_name ,
#recipients = #recipients ,
#subject = #subject ,
#body_format = #body_format ,
#body = #body
UPDATE msdb.dbo.sysmail_mailitems
SET sent_status = 3
WHERE mailitem_id = #mailitem_id
END
CLOSE SYSMAIL_LOG_RESEND_CURSOR
DEALLOCATE SYSMAIL_LOG_RESEND_CURSOR
END
GO

Answer 2

I know it's not really the answer you want to hear, but I always try and decouple the mail feature. I might use a trigger to spawn an external process if the mail sending needs to be timely, but I let the external script do the actual job of sending the mail. That way transient connection errors are taken care of by the MTA, and I don't have to worry about special book-keeping algorithms.