USERS COMPLAIN THAT THE DATABASE SERVER IS SLOW TO RESPOND OR CAUSE...

5. Users complain that the database server is slow to respond or causes timeouts,

and you’ve been running a server-side trace capturing details of query perfor-

mance. The server is busy and you’ve generated 10 × 1 GB trace files. What’s

the best way to find queries with the longest duration?

A. Open each trace file in Profiler and find longest duration.

B. Open the trace in Excel and sort by duration.

C. Use fn_trace_gettable to load the data into a table, analyze with TSQL

queries.

D. Run the trace again with a filter.

The correct answer is C; load the trace data into a table and query this table.

Answer A is incorrect; although possible, this will be difficult, time consuming,

and error prone, so it isn’t the best option. Excel can’t read SQL trace data

natively. No trace filter is available for worst performing queries.