User-Friendly Task Executor / Scheduler

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User-Friendly Task Executor / Scheduler

Phil Parkin

SSC Guru

Points: 246960
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February 9, 2024 at 11:25 am

#4375861

We have a requirement to allow certain nominated users to execute 'jobs', where the definition of a job could be running a stored proc, or a PoSh script, or some other command line task.
I'd be interested to know how others here provide this functionality to their users. Any recommendations for a suitable tool? This is in a fairly small organisation, for only a handful of users.
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The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
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Johan Bijnens SSC Guru Points: 135369 More actions · Answer 1

We have a couple of "data domain dedicated" sql stand alone instances ( std edtn ) that only serve as SQLAgent job scheduling environment.

A number of SQLAgent proxy accounts have been created and provide the passthrough to execute processes used in SQLAgent jobs.

Actually SQLAgent is poorly equipped to be a good "user driven" platform for jobs, but most jobs are being run on a schedule or triggered by an alert.

p.s. There are no user databases on these instances ( except 1 for dba monitoring purposes )

This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by Johan Bijnens.

Johan

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Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 246960 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks for responding. I'm hoping to find something a bit prettier than SQL Agent, and ideally a product which is independent of SQL Server, as it may be used for jobs which have nothing to do with databases.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin

Ant-Green SSC Guru Points: 113507 More actions · Answer 3

Might be a bit to powerful for what you need but check out dSeries workload automation from Broadcom, used that in the past for this type of centralised job management/scheduling.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/software/automation/esp-dseries

Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 246960 More actions · Answer 4

Ant-Green wrote:

Might be a bit to powerful for what you need but check out dSeries workload automation from Broadcom, used that in the past for this type of centralised job management/scheduling.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/software/automation/esp-dseries%5B/quote%5D

It certainly looks powerful, but I could not see a demo video of the product in action. It would be good to have a better idea of the user experience. Or is it so configurable that every installation looks different?

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin

Ant-Green SSC Guru Points: 113507 More actions · Answer 5

I wanna say its a bit like SSIS packages, drag and drop the things you need into the designer pane set the connection to the correct agent, give it the command and away it goes.

Been a couple of years since I last used it, so going off my aging memory here.

Jonathan AC Roberts SSCoach Points: 18354 More actions · Answer 6

Jonathan AC Roberts

SSCoach

Points: 18354

February 9, 2024 at 2:32 pm

#4375957

We use Windows Task Sheduler and SQL Agent jobs.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004340 More actions · Answer 7

Phil Parkin wrote:

We have a requirement to allow certain nominated users to execute 'jobs', where the definition of a job could be running a stored proc, or a PoSh script, or some other command line task.
I'd be interested to know how others here provide this functionality to their users. Any recommendations for a suitable tool? This is in a fairly small organisation, for only a handful of users.

Do you mean just "execute" the jobs when they want? It's been a while since I've had such a requirement but, for such things, I used to just make a stored procedure that had the privs to run the job and then give the user "exec" privs on that proc. You can also make a DB role to group certain procs in so that you can also make use of AD login group memberships.

The last time I did this was over a decade ago so I don't remember the exact details but I remember that it wasn't difficult.

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Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 246960 More actions · Answer 8

The tool should allow both scheduling and manual execution of jobs.

I'd prefer an attractive interface where we configure jobs, set up who can execute those jobs and perform the execution (and see the results of this and previous executions).

Currently, we use TeamCity to do all of this, but there is a desire to move to something with a simpler interface (and we're misusing TC somewhat … it's really a build/deploy/test tool).

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
- Martin Rees
The absence of consumable DDL, sample data and desired results is, however, evidence of the absence of my response
- Phil Parkin