SQL Server Tracing

[GT1999]

Anyone have any advanced knowledge of it?

 

[Evadman]

What is your question(s)?

 

[GT1999]

It's a requirement for a job I'm interviewing for. It's basically performance tuning of a distributed computing environment on financial system software. They're willing to train me, but I was just wondering if I'm getting myself into a bad situation (ie, tracing is a difficult thing to task).

They're also looking for 2008 Server exp, when I've mostly worked with 2003.

 

[brandonb]

If its MSSQL, the thing you need to know is the tool that comes with it called the SQL profiler. (That has been provided since the dawn of time in MSSQL, so if you have 2000 or 2005, check it out, it may be not be installed by default but you should be able to install it easily by going into add/remove programs for SQL)

To make a long story short, it basically tells you which queries are being run (in a grid, new rows get added to it as they come in), how many reads it performs on the DB, writes, and the duration of the query. You can also filter the results, such as "Only show SQL statments taking over 200ms"

You use this tool along with the execution plan within the management studio to see what the query is doing, which indexes are being hit so you can tune the statements.

Here are screenshots of both:

http://www.sqlserver2008tutorial.com/blog/temporary-tables/table-variable-profiler.jpg
http://asganesh.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/sql1.jpg