ClearTrace

ClearTrace imports SQL Server 2000 and 2005 trace (and profiler) files into SQL Server and displays summary performance information. It is designed to provide the same performance summary as Read80Trace but in a graphical environment and for SQL Server 2005.

You can view a video demonstration of ClearTrace.

Features

Summarize SQL Server Query Performance
Enhance SQL Server Performance Tuning

Normalized SQL Statements

ClearTrace "normalizes" the SQL statements to eliminate transient differences in SQL statements. For example, the following statement

Select * From qryLinksByNewsletterID Where NewsletterID=19

is normalized to

SELECT * FROM QRYLINKSBYNEWSLETTERID WHERE NEWSLETTERID={##}

This allows the common SQL statements to be grouped together to determine their impact on the system. Other steps include:

All numeric, string and date constants are converted to a placeholder
Prepared SQL is displayed as the actual statement executed
Server-side cursors are prefixed with "{CURSOR}" so they can be identified and removed
sp_executesql displays the actual SQL statement executed
Stored Procedure names are pulled from the RPC:Completed event

Integrated Query Results

Includes a simple query tool to display the performance data
Groups by Normalized SQL text, Application, Host or Login
Filters by Application, Host or Login
Sorts by CPU, Reads, Writes or Duration

Other Features

Will process all trace files sequentially from a trace
Stores the data in SQL Server where it can be easily queried or stored in a data warehouse
Can move the trace files to an archive directory after processing is complete.

Requirements

SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Eidtion, SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition must be installed on the computer that is running ClearTrace. The Express Edition doesn't install the required SMO libraries.
The trace files can be from SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.
The data can be stored in SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.
There appear to be problems that prevent SMO from reading 64-bit trace files consistently. Sometimes it works ... sometimes it doesn't.
This is BETA software. The graphical version should report any errors back to us.
The application processes the RPC:Completed and SQL:BatchCompleted events. It looks for the following columns: Text Data, Reads, Writes, CPU, Duration, Application Name, Host Name and Login Name. If one of these columns is captured for any event in the trace then they must be captured for RPC:Completed and SQL:BatchCompleted events. The SMO API isn't granular enough (or I haven't found the right call) to tell me if a particular column is associated with a particular event -- only that it's in the trace -- and I haven't added enough error handling around this yet. You'll receive the message "failed to initialize object as reader". Unfortunately this is also the same message that is generated for any number of errors so that's not very helpful.