Professional SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting

Chapter 12

Bringing It All Together with SQL Nexus

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Getting familiar with SQL Nexus
• Loading data into a Nexus database
• Analyzing the aggregated data
• Customizing SQL Nexus
• Common issues and how to resolve them

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INTRODUCING SQL NEXUS

SQL Nexus is a tool used by SQL Server professionals and Microsoft engineers to aggregate SQL Trace data, performance monitor logs, and the output of various T-SQL scripts into a single SQL Server database. This chapter explains how the data collected by SQLdiag, covered in Chapter 11, can be imported into a SQL Server database and then analyzed with the help of existing reports in SQL Nexus. SQL Nexus is a free tool available on the Microsoft CodePlex site and is provided on an as-is basis. This means that the Microsoft Support team does not support SQL Nexus and any issues related to the tool need be posted on the discussion forum of the tool’s home page on the CodePlex site.

NOTE This chapter assumes that the concepts discussed earlier in this book are already understood or have been read so that the analysis patterns discussed later in this chapter are clearly understood.

SQL Trace refers to both trace files captured using the client side SQL Profiler and the server-side SQL Trace.

SQL Nexus uses three components:

• RML Utilities (also known as ReadTrace) — A tool to aggregate data collected by SQL Trace files and import them into a SQL ...