Working with Status Message Queries

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You already know how to effectively use the Status Message Viewer to customize status messages and troubleshoot components and site systems. The Status Message Viewer displays messages on a per-component or per-system basis. Sometimes, however, you might need to see all messages of a specific type generated across all the site systems or from several components.

The SMS 2.0 development team, being one step ahead of the rest of us in this thinking, created status message queries as a means of accomplishing just that. In fact, there are nearly seventy existing default queries that may well satisfy most of your message viewing needs. These queries are listed in the Status Message Queries window, shown in Figure 5-33. To display this window, in the SMS Administrator Console, navigate to the System Status folder and expand it, and then highlight the Status Message Queries folder. For example, the query highlighted in Figure 5-33 will generate a list of all SMS clients on which the Hardware Inventory Client Agent was unable to create the Management Information Format (MIF) file needed to report the client's hardware information to the site database. Running this query is certainly easier than scanning for the error status message for every client reporting messages to the Component Status Summarizer.

click to view at full size.

Figure 5-33. The Status Message Queries window.

Most of these default queries are prompted—meaning that you must provide information such as a site code, the server name, and so on. To execute a status message query, right-click on the query in the Status Message Queries window, and choose Show Messages from the context menu. Any values that need to be resolved will be listed, and you must enter the information or values requested.

You can also create your own status message queries. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on Status Message Queries, choose New from the context menu, and choose Status Message Query to display the Status Message Query Properties window, shown in Figure 5-34.
  2. Figure 5-34. The Status Message Query Properties window.

  3. Enter a descriptive name for your query and a comment that further explains the query's purpose. Then click the Edit Query Statement button to display the Query Statement Properties window.
  4. By default, a status message query displays only status messages in its results window, thus all the options on the General tab are unavailable, as shown in Figure 5-35.

    Figure 5-35. The General tab of the Query Statement Properties window.

  5. Select the Criteria tab to create the query statement. Click the New button to display the Criterion Properties window, shown in Figure 5-36.
  6. Figure 5-36. The Criterion Properties window.

  7. Select the criterion type (in most cases, this will be Simple Value) from the drop-down list, and specify the attribute and the attribute class by clicking the Select button. The attributes describe an SMS object type and are grouped into one or more attribute classes. In this example, the attribute class Status Message consists of attributes that include component, machine name, severity, and site code, any of which can be used to qualify the results of the query. Next specify an operator by choosing one from the drop-down list. Click on the Values button to display all the values related to the attribute you selected that have been recorded in the SMS database.
  8. Click OK.
  9. To add criteria to your query, repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 for each additional criterion. When you have finished, click OK twice to save your query.

The new status message query will now be available in the Status Message Queries window. Figure 5-37 shows the results of running our sample query by right-clicking on the sample query and choosing Show Messages from the context menu. Notice that the result of the query is to display the message "This component started" for every component on the site server.

click to view at full size.

Figure 5-37. The results of running a sample status message query.



Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Administrator's Companion
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2.0 Administrators Companion (IT-Administrators Companion)
ISBN: 0735608342
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 167

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