Are there any good alternatives to the profiler that comes with SQL server? With Visual Studio, you get the Express Edition of SQL, so you don't have access to some of the tools like profiler. I was wondering if there was something good (3rd party) that I could install.
SQL Trace is alternative method to SQL Server Profiler . you write T-SQL program to collect the events and related information of the server. The four stored procedures that can be used are: sp_trace_create sp_trace_setevent sp_trace_setfilter sp_trace_setstatus for more information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191006.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186265.aspx
sqlSpy will monitor and record activity in your sql server databases. It has a ton of other really cool features for monitoring ie. # of users logged in using a really cool bubble graph, server work load, largest tables, disk space monitor. Best of all it's free! You can download it here: SQL Spy
Thanks for the replies. I actually downloaded this one a while ago: http://sqlprofiler.googlepages.com/ I was having trouble figuring out which events to check off and when I checked off all of them, I got so many results that I couldn't find what I was looking for and I thought it wasn't giving me what I needed. But, now that I've figured out what events to select, it works pretty well for me.
[quote user="satya"]Whats the problem in using 'free' tools such as PROFILER?[/quote] You mean the Microsoft tool that doesn't come with SQL 2005 Express or were you referring to something else?
