SQL Profiler

Everyone loves Profiler and for good reason, it provides you with good data to help you make your SQL Server run even better. To quote FDR, “great power involves great responsibility.” Here is a brief list of things to avoid.

Run Profiler on the same server as SQL Server.

This adds too much overhead to the server, please don’t do it, EVER! Ideally, run it on a test server that has some good system resources to be able to capture and analyse all that data.

Select too many events to trace.

For example, selecting Batch Begin and Batch Completed. Choose only what you need.

Don’t filter the results.

Filtering saves you time crawling through the results and saves SQL Server time. This falls back on number 3, choose only what you need.

Don’t join the Performance Monitoring data with Profiler data.

Why chase down a problem, that is not the real cause of your slow server? While you may see a small performance boost on the server, you may be missing the elephant in the room.