DBTA: The Ebb and Flow of SQL Server Instrumentation

Microsoft SQL Server’s relational engine has offered new instrumentation that improves by light years with each new release.  The introduction of Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) in SQL Server 2005 provided a much-needed equivalent to Oracle’s long-standing and capable V$ and X$ system views.  SQL Server 2008 has provided another dramatic improvement to its instrumentation with Extended Events (also known as XEvents) that promises to offer even greater opportunities to tune, trace and troubleshoot the inner workings of a SQL Server application.  All of this stands in stark contrast with the anemic instrumentation offered in SQL Server Analysis Services, Microsoft’s wonderful multi-dimensional data repository that is a free feature-set within the SQL Server product. [READ MORE]