This article marks the beginning of a new series that will focus
on alerts and errors within the SQL Server Agent subsystem. A
pre-defined set of demo Alert templates is included in every
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 installation, and the opportunity
exists to create a variety of custom alerts. This initial
article in the series will serve as an introduction to alerts
and the various errors you might encounter as a database
administrator. So, what is an alert? According to SQL Server
Books Online: "...an alert is a definition that matches one or
more SQL Server events and a response, should those events
occur". In general, an administrator cannot control the
occurrence of events but can control the response to those
events with alerts. Alerts can be defined to respond to SQL
Server events These actions are to be taken when specific events
occur, such as a specific error, errors of certain severities or
when a database reaches a defined limit of free space available.
Notifying one or more operators by sending them