Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 : Analysis and Troubleshooting Tools - Working with Status Message Queries

2/12/2014 3:00:35 AM

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 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 currently 70 existing default queries that might well satisfy most of your message viewing needs. These queries are listed in the Status Message Queries window, shown in Figure 1. In the SMS Administrator Console, navigate to the System Status node and expand it, then select he Status Message Queries node to display this window. For example, the query highlighted in Figure 1 will generate a list of all SMS clients on which the Hardware Inventory Agent reported some problem when trying to generate the Management Information Format (MIF) file needed to report the client’s hardware information to the site database. Running a query of this type is certainly easier than scanning for the error status message for every client reporting messages to the Component Status Summarizer.

Figure 1. 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 the query in the Status Message Queries window and choose Show Messages from the context window. Any values that need to be resolved are 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 Status Message Queries, choose New from the context menu, and choose Status Message Query to display the Status Message Query Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. The Status Message Query Properties dialog box.
2.	Enter a descriptive name for your query and a comment that further explains the query’s purpose.
3.	Click the Import Query Statement button to display the Browse Query dialog box that lists all the available status message queries, as shown in Figure 3. Select the query you would like to import into your new query and click OK. Figure 3. The Browse Query dialog box.
4.	Click the Edit Query Statement button to display the Query Statement Properties dialog box. In this dialog box, you can modify the properties of the query you imported in step 3. If you did not import an existing query, then here you can create your own new query. By default, a status message query displays only status messages in its results list; thus all the options in the General tab are unavailable, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4. The General Tab of the Query Statement Properties dialog box.
5.	Select the Criteria tab to create or modify the query statement. Any existing query statements are displayed in the Criteria list, as seen in Figure 5. Figure 5. The Criteria tab of the Query Statement Properties dialog box.
6.	Click the New button (yellow star) to add a new criteria statement or highlight an existing criteria statement and click the Edit button (hand holding paper) to display the Criterion Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6. The Criterion Properties dialog box.
7.	Select the criterion type (in most cases, this will be Simple Value) from the drop-down list and specify the attribute class and the attribute by clicking the Select button to display the Select Attribute dialog box shown in Figure 7. 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. Select an appropriate Attribute Class and Attribute and then click OK to go back to the Criterion Properties dialog box. Next, specify an operator by choosing one from the drop-down list. Click the Values button to display all the values related to the attribute you selected that have been recorded in the SMS database. Then Click OK. Figure 7. The Select Attributes dialog box.
8.	To add criteria to your query, repeat steps 6 and 7 for each additional criteria statement. When you’ve finished, click OK twice to save your query.

The new status message query is now available in the Status Message Queries window. Figure 8 shows the results of running our sample query by right-clicking 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.