Joe Webb Blog

The most common way to create a SQL Server Notification Services instance is to craft a valid and well-formed XML document for the Instance Configuration File and the Application Definition File. These two files are know as the ICF and ADF respectively and they essentially form the source code for the notification instance and application. As such, you should store them securely in the versioning repository of your choice - Visual Source Safe, Subversion, what have you.

If however, you find that you've lost the XML source files, or perhaps you've altered them without first making a backup copy to which you can revert back, all is not lost. You can have SSNS recreate the configuration files for you.

Recreating the configuration files

Simply select the Notification Services instance in SQL Server Management Studio, right click to show the context-sensitive menu, select Tasks, and choose the Export to Editor option as shown in the following screenshot.

This option combs through the SSNS metadata stored within the SSNS databases to reconstruct the XML configuration documents. Two new XML documents are opened within Management Studio as shown below.

Thought you may find this interesting.

Cheers!

Joe