How to create an Event Notification that runs a Job/procedure when mirroring state changes

I'm asking this question in the sequence of this one Can I send a string over TCP using T-SQL?

Remus Rusanu exposes what it seems to be an optimal solution for my problem, but... I'm too immature to understand and make everything he says.

So far I think what I need to create a notification event for DATABASE_MIRRORING_STATE_CHANGE, am I correct?

how can I create this event notification to when its triggered inserts a line in a table, that stores a timestamp and an ID that comes from the notification.

so far I'm setting up one alert per ID, each one running a job like this(this example is for ID = 1):

DECLARE @state AS varchar(50);
    SELECT @state = mirroring_state_desc FROM SYS.database_mirroring WHERE mirroring_guid IS NOT NULL;
    IF (@state IS null) SET @state = ' ';
    INSERT INTO MirroringAlerts (DateTime, alertID, alertDesc, Sync, alertCreator) values (SYSDATETIME(), 1, 'Principal synchronized with W ', @state, @@SERVERNAME)

Basically I'm creating an internal log in this database:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[MirroringAlerts](
    [DateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL,
    [alertID] [smallint] NOT NULL,
    [alertDesc] [nchar](50) NOT NULL,
    [Sync] [nchar](12) NOT NULL,
    [alertCreator] [nchar](128) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

But this way...the alerts are not being triggered fast enough...so I'm loosing information...

Can you tell me how to program this behaviour with create event notification for Database Mirroring State Changed event?

Best Regards

Step 1: Create a service to receive the notifications and a queue for it:

use msdb;
go

create queue dbm_notifications_queue;
create service dbm_notification_service
    on queue dbm_notifications_queue
    ([http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostEventNotification]);
go

create event notification dbm_notifications
    on server   
    for database_mirroring_state_change
    to service N'dbm_notification_service', N'current database';
go

Note that I'm using msdb, this is not an accident. Because the server level event notifications are sent from msdb it is much better if you create the opposite conversation endpoint (the target) also in msdb, which implies that the destination service and the queue must also be deployed in msdb.

Step 2: create the event notification processing procedure:

```
use msdb;
go

create table dbm_notifications_errors (
incident_time datetime not null,
session_id int not null,
has_rolled_back bit not null,
[error_number] int not null,
[error_message] nvarchar(4000) not null,
[message_body] varbinary(max));
create clustered index cdx_dbm_notifications_errors
on dbm_notifications_errors (incident_time);
go

create table mirroring_alerts (
alert_time datetime not null,
start_time datetime not null,
processing_time datetime not null,
database_id smallint not null,
database_name sysname not null,
[state] tinyint not null,
[text_data] nvarchar(max),
event_data xml not null);
create clustered index cdx_mirroring_alerts
on mirroring_alerts (alert_time);
go

create procedure dbm_notifications_procedure
as
begin
declare @dh uniqueidentifier, @mt sysname, @raw_body varbinary(max), @xml_body xml;

begin transaction;
begin try;
receive top(1)
@dh = conversation_handle,
@mt = message_type_name,
@raw_body = message_body
from dbm_notifications_queue;
if N'http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/EventNotification' = @mt
begin
set @xml_body = cast(@raw_body as xml);
-- shred the XML and process it accordingly
-- IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT!
-- DO NOT LOOK AT sys.database_mirroring
-- The view represents the CURRENT state
-- This message reffers to an EVENT that had occured
-- the current state may or may no be relevant for this PAST event
declare @alert_time datetime
, @start_time datetime
, @processing_time datetime = getutcdate()
, @database_id smallint
, @database_name sysname
, @state tinyint
, @text_data nvarchar(max);

set @alert_time = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/PostTime)[1]', 'DATETIME');
set @start_time = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/StartTime)[1]', 'DATETIME');
set @database_id = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/DatabaseID)[1]', 'SMALLINT');
set @database_name = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/DatabaseName)[1]', 'SYSNAME');
set @state = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/State)[1]', 'TINYINT');
set @text_data = @xml_body.value (N'(//EVENT_INSTANCE/TextData)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)');

insert into mirroring_alerts (
alert_time,
start_time,
processing_time,
database_id,
database_name,
[state],
text_data,
event_data)
values (
@alert_time,
@start_time,
@processing_time,
@database_id,
@database_name,
@state,
@text_data,
@xml_body);
end
else if N'http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/ServiceBroker/Error' = @mt
begin
set @xml_body = cast(@raw_body as xml);
DECLARE @error INT
, @description NVARCHAR(4000);
WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/ServiceBroker/Error' AS ssb)
SELECT @error = CAST(@xml_body AS XML).value('(//ssb:Error/ssb:Code)[1]', 'INT'),
@description = CAST(@xml_body AS XML).value('(//ssb:Error/ssb:Description)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(4000)');

insert into dbm_notifications_errors(
incident_time,
session_id,
has_rolled_back,
[error_number],
[error_message],
[message_body])
values (
getutcdate(),
@@spid,
0,
@error,
@description,
@raw_body);
end conversation @dh;
end
else if N'http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/ServiceBroker/EndDialog' = @mt
begin
end conversation @dh;
end

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#10273, answer score: 15