SQL Server Profiler is Useful and You Should Use it.

At Swan Software Solutions, our team of developers has a variety of skills. One such developer is Alexey, a Junior .NET Developer. When asked why he chose his career, he stated, “Because I like programming. I was always interested in how this or that program worked, and I wanted to learn how to develop programs. Programming does not stand still. There is always something new and interesting that can be learned.”

Alexey continues to work to improve his knowledge and advance in his career. Today, he shares about SQL Profiler and its uses.

SQL Profiler

When developing applications that need to store information, databases are used. To add, get, change or delete information, one needs to run a database query. Some queries are fast, but there are also queries that need to be optimized if they are too slow.

Analysis of the query text may not tell us about any problems. In this case, we have to study this problem at a lower level. To do this, we need to look at the text of the SQL query and the query plan. One can use SQL Profiler for this.

SQL Profiler comes with MS SQL Server, and the program is designed to view all the events that occur in SQL Server. SQL Server Profiler helps one analyze their query. An efficient SQL Server query uses the correct sequence of operations and the correct indexes to reduce the number of rows processed and minimize input-output. To view the activity, one must either define a new trace or use an existing file.

SQL Profiler is used to:

• analyze the application
• determine the optimality of requests sent to the server
• identify Transact-SQL commands that generate an error
• collect information about user activity over a long period of time
• monitor the server operation in real time

In the profiler, one can see not only a textual, but also a graphical query execution plan.

Using the profiler also can determine:

• requests taking longer than a certain time
• queries to a specific table
• waiting for locks
• timeouts
• and much more

Skillful use of the profiler will help to analyze the operation of the application, to determine why some queries are being executed slowly. Then a programmer can optimize these queries, which will lead to an increase in application performance.

We appreciate Alexey taking the time to share why SQL Profiler is useful. If you’re interested in scheduling a free assessment to see how custom solutions can help your business, contact us.