Using Trace to Monitor and Audit Analysis Services - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 759

CHAPTER 38

IN THIS CHAPTER

. Trace Architecture

Using Trace to Monitor
and Audit Analysis
Services

. Types of Trace Objects

. Creating Trace Command

Options

. SQL Server Profiler

. Flight Recorder

W henever you're working with a server application, you
naturally want to know, one could even say need to know,
what's going on inside the application. To keep track of its
inner workings, Analysis Services has a powerful mecha-
nism: trace.

. Tracing Processing Activity

. Query Execution Time Events

In end-user applications, you usually get information about
what's going on in a message that appears on the screen.
For example, if Microsoft Word cannot save your file, you
immediately see a message telling you that. In the server
applications space, however, the question is more compli-
cated because server applications such as Analysis Services
don't have a direct way to let you know what's going on.
One way to solve the problem is to write the information
into a dedicated file: the log file. Another solution is to use
a more sophisticated mechanism: trace.

With logging, the system creates a log file. As events occur
in the application, the system writes those events in the log
file. Logs come in all shapes and sizes. Every server applica-
tion developer decides what needs to be logged, how the
log is organized, and the format of the event descriptions.
The Microsoft Windows event log can serve as a good
example of an advanced version of a log. In addition to
writing its events into a log, Windows provides a common
infrastructure that makes it possible for other applications
to add their events to the Windows event log.

The Windows event log is built to be efficient. It doesn't
contain a description of every error ever produced by an
application. It contains only a pointer to a description of
the event. Windows enables a user to do advanced searching