Get hostname when reading Service Broker Queue (SQL Server 2005)

Question

I am trying to configure auditing on my SQL Server using Service Broker. I did all the configuration needed to capture the DDL Events (queue, routes, endpoints, event notification). It is working properly except that I am not able to get the hostname of the client from where the DDL event originated from.

Using the service broker's activation procedure, I tried reading the value from the message_body, but there's no xml element that contains the hostname. I can see a value for the SPID but am unable to make use of it. Exec'ing sp_who and querying sys.processes against this SPID doesn't return any value. And running sp_who without parameter shows only one process (I think it's the background process used by the service broker). Is it all because the message was sent asynchronously? But why will it cause the activation context to see different data on sys.processes view?

I am aware that there are DDL triggers that can achieve the same goal, but it seems it is tightly coupled to the command that causes it to fire. So if the triggers fails, the command will also fail.

UPDATE: I managed to retrieve the Hostname by using a combination of xp_cmdshell and sqlcmd (command line app). But I also realized that since the message is asynchronous, it is not always reliable (The SPID who issue the DDL command might have been disconnected already before the message is read from the queue).

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to implement here, but it's expected that activated procedure will only see a subset of rows in DMVs. This has to do with activation context which often impersonates a different user that you use when debugging the procedure. That impersonated user will only see these rows of server-level views and DMVs to which it has permissions. See here and here for more info.