Server-Side Tracing and Collection

Behind its nice user interface, SQL Server Profiler is nothing more than a fairly lightweight wrapper over a handful of system stored procedures which expose the true functionality of SQL Trace. In this section, we will explore which stored procedures are used, and how to harness SQL Server Profiler as a scripting tool rather than a tracing interface.

The following system stored procedures are used to define and manage traces:

  • sp_trace_create is used to define a trace and specify an output file location as well as other options that I’ll cover in the coming pages. This stored procedure returns a handle to the created trace, in the form of an integer trace ID.

  • sp_trace_setevent is used to add event/column combinations ...

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