What does N'[Uncategorized (Local)] mean?

Question

The following code is seen in several Q&A code snippets here (and elsewhere), I am trying to translate the section N'[Uncategorized (Local)]

    EXEC @ReturnCode = msdb.dbo.sp_add_category @class=N'JOB', 
       @type=N'LOCAL', @name=N'[Uncategorized (Local)]'

Examples

I have looked at Microsoft EXECUTE (Transact-SQL)

'name'

Is a valid user or login name. name must be a member of the sysadmin fixed server role or exist as a principal in sys.database_principals or sys.server_principals, respectively. name cannot be a built-in account, such as NT AUTHORITY\LocalService, NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService, or NT AUTHORITY\LocalSystem.

and

[N] 'command_string'

Is a constant string that contains the command to be passed through to the linked server. If the N is included, the string is interpreted as nvarchar data type.

And I am guessing the section N'[Uncategorized (Local)] goes and gets the name of the sysadmin and passes it to execute the job as the sysadmin, but I am not finding a good reference that indicates how all three segments are working together.

Tom V · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-01T19:59:49.833

The @name parameter is a parameter of msdb.dbo.sp_add_category and not EXEC.

See the sp_add_category documentation:

[ @name = ] 'name'

The name of the category to be added. The name must be unique within the specified class. name is sysname, with no default.

[Uncategorized (Local)] just indicates a default category when you didn't specify a category on the SQL Agent Job. The leading N just indicates the string is nvarchar and not varchar.

Please read through Organize Jobs to learn more about job categories

The code you are looking at is most likely just a scripted out job. For example when I right-click a random job on the SQL Server I'm looking at and script job as > create > new query editor window this is the result:

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT name FROM msdb.dbo.syscategories WHERE name=N'[Uncategorized (Local)]' AND category_class=1)
BEGIN
EXEC @ReturnCode = msdb.dbo.sp_add_category @class=N'JOB', @type=N'LOCAL', @name=N'[Uncategorized (Local)]'
IF (@@ERROR <> 0 OR @ReturnCode <> 0) GOTO QuitWithRollback

END

DECLARE @jobId BINARY(16)
EXEC @ReturnCode =  msdb.dbo.sp_add_job @job_name=N'Warmup_SSRS_EP', 
        @enabled=1, 
        @notify_level_eventlog=0, 
        @notify_level_email=3, 
        @notify_level_netsend=0, 
        @notify_level_page=0, 
        @delete_level=0, 
        @description=N'Warmup_SSRS_EP', 
        @category_name=N'[Uncategorized (Local)]', 
        @owner_login_name=N'domain\user', 
        @notify_email_operator_name=N'monitor operator', @job_id = @jobId OUTPUT

Where the creation of the category is just included in the script to make sure it exists because otherwise the following procedures would error out.

What does N'[Uncategorized (Local)] mean?

1 Answers1