Profiler for SQL Express

The lack of profiling tools for SQL Server Express has been one of the issues small developers have had to grapple with. If you are one of those developers check out xSQL Profiler – it provides all the functionality of the SQL Profiler and more. It supports all editions of SQL Server including MSDE and SQL Express. What’s more the xSQL Profiler is free for two SQL Server instances – fully functional, no strings attached.

So, if you are looking for a profiler for SQL Express you can get it here for free.

xSQL Profiler version 1.6 now available for download

We have just released a new version of xSQL Profiler that adds the following features:

• ability to load the trace data directly to the central repository from a UNC path without having to go through the monitored servers temp db;
• the option to set different polling intervals for each trace on each target server;
• the option to configure server level traces reducing the number of traces that will need to be started on the monitored servers

xSQL Profiler allows you to configure and schedule SQL traces to run simultaneously on multiple servers and automatically collects all trace data into a central repository.

You can download the new version from: http://www.xsql.com/download/sql_server_profiler/

New build of xSQL Profiler published

We just released a new build of xSQL Profiler that does two main things:

• significantly improves the process of uploading trace data from the servers being traced to the central repository; we had received reports from users indicating that under stress conditions the pulling of the trace data from each individual server into the central repository could time out and hence there would be gaps in the trace data collected. The improved process performs significantly better and should eliminate any issues experienced with the previous build.
• allows the user to see the status of a given trace on each one of the servers on which the trace runs. In cases when xSQL Profiler may loose the connection with a server it will not be able to stop the traces that it has started on that server. Of course it would stop them when the connection is re-established but there was no easy way for the user to see if the trace was still running on some of the servers while stopped on some others. Now the user can simply "drill down" on a trace and see what is happening on each server.

xSQL Profiler allows you to define a trace and schedule it to run on any number of SQL Servers simultaneously while automatically collecting trace data from all servers into a central repository. xSQL Profiler supports SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000.

xSQL Profiler versus SQL Profiler

What do you need xSQL Profiler for when you have SQL Profiler? Well, here are three important things you can do with xSQL Profiler that you can’t with SQL Profiler:

• you can define a trace once and run it on multiple servers simultaneously;
• you can schedule the traces to start and stop automatically;
• trace data from all servers is automatically collected into one central repository

xSQL Profiler supports SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 all editions including MSDE and SQL Server Express.

New version of xSQL Profiler released

We have just released a new version of xSQL Profiler. In addition of performance and other improvements on the core (including bug fixes of course) it includes custom query templates that allow the user to gain invaluable insight from the trace data that the xSQL Profiler collects. It utilizes SQL statement signatures to identify the queries that may be bogging a particular server down because of CPU consumption, I/O traffic etc.

The performance reports included in this release are:

• Top N queries by number of times executed
• Top N queries by CPU time
• Top N queries by duration
• Top N queries by number of Reads
• Top N queries by Read/Writes
• Top N queries by number of Writes

xSQL Profiler supports SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 all editions. You can even trace SQL Server Express and MSDE instances.

Completely free with no restrictions or limitations for up to two SQL Server instances. Download your copy today from: http://www.xsql.com/download/sql_server_profiler/

Tracing MSDE and SQL Server Express

About a month ago we released xSQL Profiler and advanced SQL Server profiling tool that allows you to define granular traces, schedule them to run when you want on multiple SQL Servers simultaneously, and automatically collect the trace data into a central data repository which you can freely query - all from one location without any agents on the target servers.

We have mentioned that one of the best things about xSQL Profiler is that it is free for up to two SQL Server instances but what we neglected to specifically mention is that not only does xSQL Profiler support higher editions of SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 but it also supports MSDE and SQL Server Express. Yes, you can now use xSQL Profiler to trace MSDE and SQL Server Express installations.

Download, enjoy and don’t forget to send us your comments and suggestions!