I see a lot of posts saying that to check if a job is currently
executing one needs to look at run_status for the job in the
sysjobhistory table in msdb catalog. I also see the possible values
of that column in the help files. What gets me is that even when I
know my job is executing (according to MMC), no record in the
sysjobhistory has the run_status of 4 (In Progress). Why is that? Is

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This looks like it may be a case of misleading documentation - there
is no entry in sysjobhistory until the job has completed (or failed,
or been cancelled). Enterprise Manager uses sp_help_job to get the
information, and that doesn't seem to use the sysjobhistory table at
all (it calls an extended proc to get the current job status, rather
than querying a table).

So I suspect that the information about status 4 is inaccurate in one
way or another (out of date, reserved for future use etc.), although I
may be wrong. In any case, you should probably use sp_help_job or the
SQLDMO Job object.

Thank you Simon, I appreciate the help. It is pretty confusing when the
documentation describes a status that does not exist. Thanks again

Alexey Aksyonenko
MCDBA, SQL Server 2000

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