Deadlock email notification shows <unknown> instead of the database name (4377347)

Customers report that after upgrading to 14.1.x the email notification for deadlock alarms is no longer showing the DBID and instead of showing the database name, it shows <unknown>

Defect ID SES-2031

WORKAROUND 1:

Modify the email alarm action responsible and include the following expression at the end of the subject line:

{{deadlocklist.victim_spid}}

This will return the DBID of the deadlock.

WORKAROUND 2:

If you are running version 14.1.1 and are seeing this error for SQL server 2019, please upgrade to 14.1.2.

STATUS

Issue fixed in Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise 15.1

The latest version of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise can be downloaded here.

NOTE: The database_name parameter in the output of sys.dm_xe_sessions.targets was introduced starting with SQL Server 2019. This DMV (Dynamic Management View) is used to retrieve information about the targets configured for the running extended event sessions. In earlier versions, this parameter was not present, which results in the <unknown> expression.