Microsoft SQL Maintenance Jobs for BizTalk Server 2004

This article covers some observations and challenges with the MSSQL maintenance jobs installed with BizTalk Server 2004.  For error messages I’ve seen associated with other MSSQL maintenance jobs, please see my blog post: Microsoft SQL Maintenance Jobs for BizTalk Server 2004.  I will update this article as I continue to resolve issues and receive feedback.

To refresh; BizTalk Server 2004 creates 8 maintenance tasks to keep the MessageBox and other BizTalk databases running smoothly.  The jobs include:

• Backup BizTalk Server
• CleanupBTFExpiredEntriesJob_BizTalkMgmtDb
• MessageBox_DeadProcesses_Cleanup_BizTalkMsgBoxDb
• MessageBox_Message_Cleanup_BizTalkMsgBoxDb
• MessageBox_Parts_Cleanup_BizTalkMsgBoxDb
• PurgeSubscriptionsJob_BizTalkMsgBoxDb
• TrackedMessages_Copy_BizTalkMsgBoxDb
• TrackingSpool_Cleanup_BizTalkMsgBoxDb

More detail on these jobs is available in the BizTalk Database Appendix (in progress; contact me for an advance copy) and in the BizTalk documentation on MSDN.  These jobs are set up to run at default intervals ranging from once a minute to once a week and, for the most part, require little tweaking.

You must edit and enable the first and last jobs on the list in order for them to function.  For more detail, see the BizTalk Database Appendix (in progress; contact me for an advance copy).  If you see the jobs failing, view the job history; some interesting error messages can arise:

The following error occurs if you don’t install all the features of BizTalk Server 2004 (HWS, BRE, etc.):

“Warning: The table ‘#catalogs’ has been created but its maximum row size (8281) exceeds the maximum number of bytes per row (8060). INSERT or UPDATE of a row in this table will fail if the resulting row length exceeds 8060 bytes. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 1708)  Invalid object name ‘adm_OtherBackupDatabases’. [SQLSTATE 42S02] (Error 208)  Warning: The table ‘#catalogs’ has been created but its maximum row size (8281) exceeds the maximum number of bytes per row (8060). INSERT or UPDATE of a row in this table will fail if the resulting row length exceeds 8060 bytes. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Error 1708).  The step failed.“

To resolve this issue, create the ‘adm_OtherBackupDatabases’ table in the BizTalkMgmtDb (or it’s equivalent in your installation) in SQL Query Analyzer with the following script:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[adm_OtherBackupDatabases] (
[DefaultDatabaseName] [nvarchar] (128) NOT NULL ,
[DatabaseName] [nvarchar] (128) NOT NULL ,
[ServerName] [nvarchar] (80) NOT NULL ,
[BTSServerName] [nvarchar] (80) NOT NULL
)
GO

For more detail, please see “The Backup BizTalk Server SQL Job Fails ..“ article in MSDN.

Jeff Lynch has a useful article on these jobs in BizTalk Server 2004 – Database Growth.  It’s well worth a look.