Can I use Profiler on SQL Server Express Edition ?

Posted by DBATAG on January 7, 2011 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

NO, SQL Server profiler is not supported on Express Edition.

Recently, I came across with an incident, where one of my customer, wanted me to monitor SQL Statement on a Express Edition.  (Note: A Server, which has SQL Server Express edition installed, doesn’t host the profiler tool).

So we have four workarounds available to run a profiler on SQL Server Express Edition

  1. USE Third Party  tool named “SQL Server 2005/2008 Express Profiler“. this tool provides most of the functionality as a standard profiler does, such as choosing events to profile etc.
  2. Run a Profiler from a remove machine which has SQL Server Profiler installed. This is not a recommended option as this may cause severe IO issues.
  3. Install only SQL Server Tools on a server, which has EXPRESS Edition using a “SQL Server Standard / Enterprise / Evaluation / Developer Edition” media (installation files)
  4. Fourth Option, which I like the most, Start a Server side trace using TSQL Scripts and read the trace files using following TSQL Script
-- Select statement to read data from a trace file
SELECT *  FROM ::fn_trace_gettable
('F:\Trace_output1.trc', default) where CPU > 10000

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