Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans- P39: SQL Server has a reputation as being a simple database application to install, configure, and maintain. This is a little misleading. SQL Server is a powerful relational database that can handle the needs of the largest organizations and, as such, its proper maintenance almost certainly requires the attention of an experienced DBA. | Chapter 16 Introduction to the Maintenance Plan Designer Figure The right-hand side of the screen is dominated by the design surface highlighted in red where you visually create Maintenance Plans using the Maintenance Plan Designer. Starting at the top of Figure we see the Designer menu bar covered later and then a name textbox that is automatically filled in with the name you gave to the plan. Below that is a textbox where you can optionally enter a description of the plan which 1 recommend you do. Below that is a grid describing the various subplans that comprise your Maintenance Plan. We ll take we brief look at this now but will discuss subplans in a lot more detail in Chapter 18. 191 Chapter 16 Introduction to the Maintenance Plan Designer Subplans The grid just above the design surface lists the subplans that comprise your Maintenance Plan and allows you to set a schedule for each of them as shown in Figure . This is different from how scheduling was done using the Database Maintenance Wizard. In the Wizard each task had its own schedule. Using the Designer scheduling is done by the subplan and a subplan can contain one or more tasks. Figure Subplans are created and managed here. Each subplan represents a collection of maintenance tasks that run on the same time schedule. We will cover the topic of subplans in much more detail in Chapter 18 but for the time being you just need to know that a single Maintenance Plan can be made up of several subplans. Each subplan is made up of one or more maintenance tasks and each subplan can be assigned its own time schedule. In other words you can schedule the set of tasks defined by one subplan to run on a different schedule from the set of tasks in another subplan. Subplans and SQL Server Agent Jobs Behind the scenes when you create a Maintenance Plan a SQL Server Agent job is created for each subplan. As such each subplan runs independently of other subplans within a given Maintenance Plan Certain .
