Query SQL Server Job Tables

If you have ever wanted to query the SQL Server job tables then you know they are a little cryptic. The following query will assist you in getting some useful information out of those tables. I recently wanted to be able to query these tables and get the error for when there was a failure during the running of the job. This can be accomplished using this query and just adding another couple of fields. You can add the job history (jh alias in this query) sql_severity and message columns. Then you can simply do a where statement to search the message column for a particular error or for particular keywords that pertain to errors, such as something novel like "error"!! Hope this helps. You can also get some useful information from the table msdb..jobactivity.

SELECT
CONVERT(DATETIME, RTRIM(jh.run_date)) + (jh.run_time * 9 + jh.run_time % 10000 * 6 + jh.run_time % 100 * 10) / 216e4 AS RunDateTime,
j.name AS JobName,
jh.step_id AS StepID,
SUBSTRING(RIGHT('000000' + CONVERT(varchar(6), jh.run_duration), 6), 1, 2) + ':' + SUBSTRING(RIGHT('000000' + CONVERT(varchar(6), jh.run_duration), 6), 3, 2) + ':' + SUBSTRING(RIGHT('000000' + CONVERT(varchar(6), jh.run_duration), 6), 5, 2) AS StepRunTime,
jh.step_name AS StepName
FROM msdb..sysjobhistory jh
INNER JOIN msdb..sysjobs j ON jh.job_id = j.job_id
ORDER BY jh.run_date, jh.run_time, j.job_id, jh.step_id