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Replay Options

Before replaying a captured trace, you can specify the following options in the Replay Configuration dialog box. To launch this dialog box, open the replay trace file or table in SQL Server Profiler, and on the Replay menu, click Start.

For information about what permissions are required to replay a trace, see Permissions Required to Run SQL Server Profiler.

Basic Replay Options

  • Replay server
    The server is the name of the instance of SQL Server against which you want to replay the trace. The server must adhere to the replay requirements described in Replay Requirements."

  • Save to file
    The output file where the result of replaying the trace is written for later viewing. By default, SQL Server Profiler displays only the results of replaying the trace on the screen.

  • Save to table
    The database table where the result of replaying the trace is written for later viewing.

  • Number of replay threads
    Specify the number of replay threads to use concurrently. A higher number consumes more resources during replay, but replay is faster. Event ordering is not fully maintained when multiple threads are used.

  • Replay events in the order they were traced
    Allows you to use debugging methods such as stepping through each trace. If this option is not selected, replay does not guarantee that events are replayed in an order that is consistent with the order in which events were originally captured.

  • Replay events using multiple threads
    Optimizes performance and disables debugging. Events are replayed in the order they were recorded for a particular server process ID (SPID), but ordering of SPIDs is not guaranteed.

  • Display replay results
    Display the results of the replay. This is the default option. If the trace you are replaying is very large, you may want to disable this to save disk space.

    Note

    For best replay performance, we recommend that you select to replay events using multiple threads, and do not select to display the replay results.

Advanced Replay Options

  • Replay system SPIDs
    Replay all SPIDs. This is the default option.

  • Replay one SPID only
    Replays the SPID number you choose from the list.

  • Limit replay by date and time
    Replays the trace for the specified Start time and End time.

  • Health monitor wait interval
    Sets the amount of time a process is allowed to run before the health monitor terminates it.

  • Health monitor poll interval
    Sets how often the health monitor polls candidates for termination.

  • Enable SQL Server blocked processes monitor
    Sets how often the blocked processes monitor searches for blocked or blocking processes.

About the Health Monitor

The health monitor is an application thread that monitors the simulated processes involved in replaying a trace, and ends those processes that are blocked within the replay. In the Advanced Replay Options tab of the Replay Configuration dialog box, you can specify how long the health monitor should wait in seconds before ending a blocked process (Health monitor wait interval). If you set this interval to 0, the health monitor never ends simulated blocking processes in the replaying trace.