Start SQL Server Jobs when field = specific value

Question

I don't know if this is even possible, so i would appreciate any ideas, even those outside of Sql Server 2005, on how this might be accomplished. I have a linked server set up to a remote mainframe and I have a simple import job that runs overnight. The problem is that the table on the mainframe that the import needs to come from is just a temporary report file that gets overwritten each time a user runs that report, sometimes with different parameters, so the data is always changing. One request was that the SQL job would run only when a specific user runs the report. This is stored as a field in the same mainframe report table that the import is coming from. Setting up a scheduled run on the mainframe is not an option since we don't control it an having the owners set it up would be costly, don't ask me why. Any ideas that will keep me from forcing the user to run the mainframe report at a specific time would be helpful.

Answer 1

Well, the only thing that you could do from this side is to pull periodically and detect a change. You may try to set up a job that queries only report version, time-stamp and the author. The job runs every 5 minutes and triggers the import job when it detect changes. Not elegant, but it may be good enough.