11. Quick Trace®

Quick Trace provides a complete picture of exactly which processes are doing work on the server by automatically correlating trace and process activity data together for the first time. Totals are provided for CPU, I/O, network, batches, transactions, cache misses, recompiles, cursor operations, and many other valuable SQL Server metrics.

Never again will you have to deal with continually starting and stopping Profiler and refreshing Activity Monitor, and tediously correlating and calculating aggregates!

There are several ways to execute a QuickTrace. Right click anywhere on the Dashboard, Disk Activity, or Disk Space views within Performance Advisor, click on Run QuickTrace from the QuickTrace tab, or click on the Run QuickTrace button on the Console toolbar.

Quick Trace can also be automated in response to many different conditions such as "Blocking SQL", so if a problem occurs after hours you'll always have the full details.