How to skip a job step based on outcome of previous SQL Agent job step?

Question

I'm trying to create a job that will run based on the online status of a database. For example, step 1 will check if the database is online; if the database is online, it will run the rest of the steps, otherwise, it will report the job as successful.

Answer 1

Well you could set step 1 to be:

DECLARE @dbState TINYINT;
SELECT @dbState = state FROM sys.databases WHERE name = N'dbname';
IF @dbState = 0
BEGIN
  RAISERROR('Database is online.', 11, 1);
END

Set the properties of step 1 to be:

• on success, go to step 2
• on failure, go to step N

Step 2 -> n-1 would do their normal things. Step n-1 might quit the job with success on success, or move to step N on success.

Step N could be as simple as:

PRINT 1;

...and would be set to quit the job with success.

Answer 2

Typically I use the On Success/On Failure to control the flow. If you have different branches, at the end of each "branch" there has to be a NO-OP step which goes to the continuation:

Step 1 - Some Op - On Failure Goto Step 4, On Success Go to next step
Step 2 - Some Op
Step 3 - Goto continuation step
Step 4 - Some op
...
Step n - Continnuation step
Step n+1 - finish the common processing

Needless to day, managing this linear flow with GOTO is not grewat for complex logic flows.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Stairway+Series/72457/